Paper mache, casts and expandable foam

Hi everyone!

Some days (weeks?) was thinking upon making a bust of myself in order to use as manequin for some things I'd like to try and thought first to make it with plaster gauze strips and then fill it also with the same material plus some layers of paper and more plaster gauze strips hoping that would become stronger.
With time I just remembered that had thought, many many months ago, about some material that I could use as filling, something not that fragile and light at the same time. Used to see my father working on house restorings thought about expandable foam! Wow, such a nice material! and extremely cheap!!!
After a few searchings online expandable foam and I became best friends!

This post isnt about the bust (not yet) but about some casts I started to make from the fruits I've been building up until now (like the apple for example).

Building the fruits, like I wrote before, is extremely interesting because one end up by really having to look at them in order to understand their shapes. Time wise can be consuming and plus I live in a rather humid environment. But the idea would be to be able to construct as many different fruits as possible in order to to make foam cast in order to easily reproduce them as much as possible.

Today we went into what we call "chinese shop" which basically its like a 1£ shop and they have almost anything, all "made in china", all rather cheap (okay, for local economy is shitty but for locals without much much money is ideal (thus their empire here (dont know if other countries in europe have the same))) and to my surprise (or shock) found some plastic fruits that could easily substitute all the work I've been doing, constructing the fruit in paper clay, then covering the halves with plaster gauze strips, filling them with expandable foam and then glue both and finally sand the foam until the shape I want.
Got mixed feelings ... Sad because with 1 euro I could have the fruits I needed for my projects and thus not needing to spend much money on material and "wasting" time until mine are not dried, but also relieved for the same reason! Eitherway, and having started a lemon during the morning, I decided to buy some to complement the ones I have already and maybe, just maybe, I'll end up by doing a foam cast from the plastic fruits.

From left to right: the apple I made, behind a still paper mache clay strawberry, up front a foam cast of an egg with a foam cherry behind, the foam cast of "my" apple and finally the plastic fruits.

 

Thanks for visiting!