Wildlifeart » Carvings and modellings

Wooly mammoth skull

admin — Wed, 18 May 2016 19:55:52 +0000

This was my winter holiday project that I made for Tampere Vapriikki museum exhibition Ice Age Giants. The plan was to make natural size wooly mammoth skull with tusks. Some of the skeletons that have been deep in acidic bogs have this kind of nice deep brown color.

Inner structure is made of steel tubing. It was tricky to invent very light, but strong structure that could hold force caused by long tusks.
All bones are made of insulation foam, polyurethane foam and plastic padding. Surfaces have 2 layers of epoxy resin colored with pigment powders. I used 1,5l resin and 6 pieces of insulation foam sheets. Rough shapes were cut with Japanese saw. Other shaping was done with different sanders and hot wire cutter.
This project produced huge amounts of static plastic dust, that could be found everywhere next weeks.

Skulls weight is altogether 15kg.

http://vapriikki.fi/nayttelyt/jaakauden-jattilaiset/

Tadpoles

admin — Sat, 08 Aug 2015 17:05:25 +0000

This wooden box has mini diorama from Siikalahti Bird Lake. Lid has 1cm deep cavity where I made water scene from resin. Small tadpoles were painted layer by layer between casted resin. Plants are made of Sukerukun, which comes from Japan. It can be dyed with acrylics before shaping.

Glow worm diorama

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2015 10:29:44 +0000

This is small Glow worm diorama made for Vapriikki natural history museum. Materials are Luna- and sukerukun clay and PP100 plastic padding.
These Glow worm models have gloving tritium ampull inside.

Clay products for making flowers and plants

admin — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 08:29:11 +0000

Luna Clay artificial clay that main ingredient is specific paper pulp. It is air-drying clay so no firing is needed. In dry weather drying takes only ten minutes. Luna Clay takes colour of oil paints very well and could be pressed into very thin layers. When dry it is still soft and flexible. You can paint details easily to make plants more realistic. After it’s shaped and dried, it’s still soft and flexible and could be painted additional colours to make the flowers look realistic.
Other new product I will test is Sukerukun clay. It is air-drying, transparent resin clay that dries also without heating. Package colour is white, but this clay comes transparent during drying. Drying time is1-3 days. This clay stays flexible when it dries. This clay can be dyed easily with acrylics or oil paints.

My plan is to make realistic clay plants. It will be interesting to see results!