Monday, March 2, 2009

Dragon Skin Tests #2 - Pigments

More tests - now with pictures! I was very worried about pigmenting Dragon Skin given it's picky reputation, but so far have been pleasantly surprised. This is 5 test strips, made from a plaster mold. A bit of white remains on the surface from treating the mold cavities with white acrylic paint to act as a release. It worked, but took some of the paint with it.
Details below 1 & 2.
1 is: thin coat DS brushed on, baked (1/2 hr 150F), layer of black acrylic paint and DS mixed, bake, layer of red acrylic and DS mixed, fill rest of cavity, bake.
2 is: Thin coat of DS brushed on, baked, layer of soft pastel scraped off with a blade and mixed with DS, baked, repeat, fill, bake.

Details below 3 & 4.
3 is (my current favourite) thin layer of DS brushed into mold, soft pastel sprinkled on, baked, layer of DS, sprinkling of soft pastel, bake, fill, bake. Smaller shavings will result in a finer detail for the future.
4 is: thin layer of DS brushed on, baked, thin layer of DS followed with red FW Acrylic inks (brushed on very lightly), bake, thin layer of DS followed with green ink, fill, bake.
Details below 5 and closeup, 3.
5 is: Black Liquitex paint mixed directly into the DS, baked. Small white flecking on top is the acrylic paint pulled from the mold; for two things that aren't supposed to get along the paint was very successful and the only material change was increasing the stretch of the DS and making it slightly tacky; talc would be needed.
Closeup 3 details a small diagonal red line where too much pigment fell and the DS didn't stick to itself properly; after rubbing the surface the top layer slightly peels.
The setup - a chocolate milk container and popscicle stick were used to mix the DS, oversized eyedroppers to measure.
Hard to make out (bit of motion blur on the first) this is 100% DS and 70/30 DS/Slacker in the second.
Same pieces, stretched. Hard to see much difference from the pictures but the Slacker mixed piece stretches much easier and has a more organic feel.
As all pieces are holding up well this is very encouraging for colouring!

6 comments:

jriggity said...

great coverage of your experimentation!

keep it comin.

jriggity

a guy in a gorilla suit said...

Silicone and a more 'organic' feeling. Yesterday I stubled over a video about androids in developtment (japan), that look 'very realistic' - in a seriously scary way !!! They were really spooky, with all the skin texture and everything... But great to follow your documentation. I myself will start with latex, ahm, later, after finishing what I started. Great, how you document all your experiences with the photos (stretched / un-streched (?))

Emily said...

Yeah - some of those Androids are crazy! Have you seen this one? www.projectaiko.com/ He built it in his basement in his free time!!

I'm probably over-documenting, but one of the hesitations for me not using foam latex is never having handled it, really knowing it's properties - hopefully I can help profile silicone for other curious ppl!

a guy in a gorilla suit said...

Over-documetating ? Where else should we get all this nice information...
And about Aiko: She was one of them I was talking about. There is also another side to them; being produced as... ahm... how should I say... ahm: "Lifesize Toys for adults (male ones)". I will post about this another time. Really weird stuff, that somehow fascinates me.

Unknown said...

Hi! I was wondering have you tried to paint directly on the silicone?
If you did how'd you do it?

Emily said...

Hey Susumu,
You can paint onto the silicone with new batches of silicone - tinted with special tints (FuseFX) or by using ground up soft pastel - that's what I did. Grind them up well, mix different ones to get the colour you want, then mix that with Part B of the silicone. Mix that equally with Part A and paint it on (or thin it with naptha or stove fuel and airbrush it on). It'll dry a bit glossy - I just powdered it with corn starch once it was lightly tacky. The pigments should quicken the cure so you have to keep an eye on it. You want to paint within 48 hrs or so to make sure the new batch will stick to the main piece.