Having trouble sticking oil based clay to hydrocal lifecast

[Drakon58]

A day ago, I had my face lifecasted in hydrocal as a positive to sculpt on top of, but I seem to be having trouble sticking my NSP Chavant medium clay to it.

I thought this might have been because the cast had not dried up enough as the back of it still felt cold and damp, so I left it overnight in front of a fan and tried adhering some clay to it this morning, The back of the cast did feel like there was a slight bit of moisture left, but I thought that the face surface was at least dry enough by now to being working on. The result was slightly better but still not tacky enough that I could put pressure on a sculpt without the clay eventually delaminating.

Has my cast still not dried out enough, or is there some sort of surface preparation I need to do before sculpting with oil based clay on hydrocal?

 

[Snikt]

A day ago, I had my face lifecasted in hydrocal as a positive to sculpt on top of, but I seem to be having trouble sticking my NSP Chavant medium clay to it.

I thought this might have been because the cast had not dried up enough as the back of it still felt cold and damp, so I left it overnight in front of a fan and tried adhering some clay to it this morning, The back of the cast did feel like there was a slight bit of moisture left, but I thought that the face surface was at least dry enough by now to being working on. The result was slightly better but still not tacky enough that I could put pressure on a sculpt without the clay eventually delaminating.

Has my cast still not dried out enough, or is there some sort of surface preparation I need to do before sculpting with oil based clay on hydrocal?

Hi there. Its always a good idea to let your lifecast dry out for a couple days just to make sure the excess moisture is out of it, or to speed up the process, you can put it in your oven at the lowest temperature it goes, and leave it in there for a couple of hours. What I do to get the clay to stick to the hydrocal, is to warm it up. Then as Im blocking something out, I use little bits so I can stick it really good to the lifecast. Either keep a microwave handy and warm it up periodically, or, like I have, I have a toaster oven right next to where I sculpt, and I swap batches of clay in and out, after I cut it up and put it in paper buckets. Warming the clay up, not to too hot or anything to where it melts, just warm so its easier to stick to the surface, really makes a difference. Its a heck of a lot easier to get it to stick to hydrocal than ultracal, thats for sure.

 

[Drakon58]

Thanks for the response. I had a feeling it wasn't dry enough, so the oven idea might be a good idea. For heating, I've built a simple heating box that has a halogen bulb installed so that ideally should get the clay warm enough to stick as much as clay warmed in a microwave.

Will try to speed things up with the oven method you mentioned for sure.

 

[Snikt]

Thanks for the response. I had a feeling it wasn't dry enough, so the oven idea might be a good idea. For heating, I've built a simple heating box that has a halogen bulb installed so that ideally should get the clay warm enough to stick as much as clay warmed in a microwave.

Will try to speed things up with the oven method you mentioned for sure.

My pleasure, I love sculpture questions, and make up stuff. Oh cool, did you do the line the inside with foil method? That worked pretty well for me, takes a bit to heat up, but I think I might have made my box too big back when I used to do that haha.

If I may ask, what are you sculpting?

 

[Drakon58]

Yeah, just had a large cardboard box with aluminium glued to the sides, aluminium tape sealing the corners. As I'm just getting into mask making and stuff, I figured it would be a good idea to do something humanoid looking first, so I choose the Solitaire's Daemonic mask from Warhammer 40k as it already had a very humanoid look to it. That and because it does look pretty awesome.

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net...closeup.png/revision/latest?cb=20150301212103

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net...re_Mask.png/revision/latest?cb=20150302003313