Castilene, a difficult + magical modeling medium

Castilene is a new (to me) take on classic wax-based modeling clays like Roma Plastilina or Klean Klay; I find it to be infinitely cleaner and more pleasant to work with, and you're not left with the smell of the product on you and a greasy feel on your hands for days. It's sulfur-free meaning that it will not inhibit curing of most common moldmaking products, and its label description states that no known compound can degrade the material. Amazing!

I needed some slabs for a current project so I turned my home kitchen into a clay station. My studio isn't currently outfitted with that kind of open space, nor do I have a microwave or hot plate like I do at home.

For a good 24 hours I was just petrified by how incredibly hard and brittle the "medium"-softness Castilene was. It didn't warm up easily or break up into soft chunks like Klean Klay likes to do. I was afraid of heating it up, thinking it might be messy.

I finally dumped out a 2.5 lb box ($25 at Compleat Sculptor) into a large ceramic serving dish and started warming it up. I used the inverter/soften setting for a few minutes, then put it on full blast for about a minute. This let the clay get malleable and soft, but I noticed that microwaving doesn't heat the clay evenly. You're left with some crusty, dry-feeling edges and then some crazy hot spots. I recommend mixing up the batch and letting it marinate in its own heat for about 5 minutes. The overheated clay will warm up the dry bits.

I wiped the counter down with mineral oil, the way you would flour for baking, and started rolling, smashing, cutting, doing anything I could to get a nice even slab. I'd take the trimmings, throw it in the bowl, re-heat, and continue to make slabs. The clay takes on a gorgeous smooth hard sheen when it is cold, and maintains rigidity at room temperature. I LOVE IT.

It is difficult to work with and isn't quite grab-and-go like Klean Klay, which I would recommend for small less-precise or press-molded projects, but Castilene definitely blew my mind a little when I started working with it this week.

Sequins, kiln unload, more salt & alchemy

At the studio today: unloading the first batch of kiln tests/future pendant blanks. "Blanks" meaning here that they are unshaped, raw pieces that will eventually be cut, faceted, and polished in a cold shop.

Testing laboratory glass slides with specimen wells, Glassline brand paints, white glue + mica flakes, Uroboros powdered colors and handmade sheet glass (blown cylinders from Spectrum 96).

Also continuing with the salt solutions––picking up and examining yesterday's dried vellums, and pouring new batches onto little plastic sequins to see what sort of half artificial/half crystalline formations we can create.

Carefully staged action shot...

Iridescent little flowers...

Examining one of yesterday's paintings in the sunlight pouring in through the skylight...click the image to see the studio shots.

We then moved on to organization. Over twenty different kinds of hand-dyed cultured pearls in all types of gorgeous nacred pastels and jeweltones, rebagged into glassine envelopes.

We had some sorting of silver and gemstones to do, as well...so I used my folded-silver boat ring from my very first jewelry class as a scoop...

Scars, hairs, African textiles from ASOS and my most favorite birdie scissors.

We've got the "gallery wall" on the close-side wall of the studio up and running.

Finally, my long-awaited copy of Cumbrian Alchemy, featuring the work of my friend/atomic priest Bryan Wilson and his colleague Robert Williams. You can purchase a copy by contacting artshop@cumbria.ac.uk.

Clean side/dirty side & new salt experiments

I've finally got the "dirty side" of my studio up and running. This is where the hazardous materials, messy moldmaking business, glass dust, enamels, wax etc. live. They are NOT allowed on the clean side of my studio! I picked this up from the age-old darkroom rule that you live and die by, which is wet side/dry side.

I still haven't found a good place for the mica flakes and glitters I like to use, though. They're so invasive they don't even belong in the dirty side, I think. Someday I'll have a boxed-in ventilation booth dedicated just to glitters...

Some sort of pastel crystal rainbow due to a trick of the light.

I've always been a huge fan of the nearly-colorless, white-on-white, especially if it involves sparkle––so, this week I'm revisiting poured paint solutions and substituting salt for pigment instead. I've tried pure oversaturated salt solution, which crystallized beautifully and left cuboids large and small bonded fairly tightly to the paper; I've tried pouring the salt water over pre-existing gouache paintings; finally, I've tried introducing liquid fluorescent pigment into pre-spilled salt water. All three have yielded interesting results.

I'm interested in MSG as a possible additive. The crystals are sharper and more cylindrical in food-serving form, but who knows what kind of fabulous larger formations they may form when diluted and dried?