Castilene Clay

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Three grades, Soft, Medium. Hard They all LOOK the same... (good!)

Today I start off on a new method of artistic expression. My special Castilene sculpting clay has arrived and I am about to discover what I can do with this material.

It is like having a new toy with which to play. I like making dimensional art, and sculpting is about as dimensional as it gets for free form creation. It’s all about a three dimensional tangible object rather than a two dimensional flat view image.

I am not finding fault with any type of artistic vision method such as drawing, painting, or even photography, rather contemplating the “touchy” features of creating dimensional objects. It is part of the reason I like carving wax and making silver castings.

I am thinking with using clay my subjects can be much larger than I have been creating with wax alone. I will probably move to resin casting rather than metal if my projects get too large. No rules. Just being practical. I could always decide something is so nice I need to cast it in bronze, but I am not (yet) planning of being a bronze maker.

There is a whole wide world of subject material out there for me to explore. At this point I am not thinking large and complex. I don’t have the knowledge and skills for that. But I know I am perfectly capable of doing wood carving size projects, from the very small to say a foot in height.

At first poke, there is NOT a lot of difference between the three grades. There definitely IS a difference but not as much as I was imagining. All of it is fairly hard at my present 74 degree room temperature but I can mark it with a finger nail. It all softens quickly and the soft grade actually melted like wax when I tested the surface with a steel wax carving tool I heated with my alcohol lamp. Looks like I will have no problem working with this material.

The product information (instruction) sheet says Castilene will burn out for lost wax casting (LWC). It will leave a slight ash that should be blown out of the mold cavity before pouring. This seems to be intended for larger (foundry) type LWC rather than the size of work that I produce. I will certainly experiment, but wax seems to be best product for very small molds like I make.

Let the fun begin...