Woohoo! All finished and packed up for mailing... forgot to take a photo of it actually on the black cotton cord, but here's the project in reverse order.
Final version:
The texture was achieved via three methods; sculpting it right into the clay master (some detail got lost in sculpting both sides); using a dremel with a drill bit to scour some of the 'knapped' spots deeper; and finally, after it was cast and sanded up, I took it to a suitable anvil (in other words the vulcanizer machine that weights a gagillion pounds) and applied percussive creativity.
Aka: I smacked the shit out of it with a hammer. Artfully. XD
And somehow, I managed *not* to bust the loop or dent it too badly. I made three casts I deemed fit enough to take to the finishing stages; I ended up only needing to work one of them over and it was this one :D (the other two got melted right back into the smelter)
(more below the cut)
Here it is right before being polished, fresh from being beat the heck up:
And in the sculpting phase:
I don't have permission to share the original photos of the arrowhead I made a replica of, but the biggest difference is the loop and the texture; I also added a little medicine wheel to one side (which the client wanted to keep; it was placed in a spot wherein if they didn't like it, i could have sanded it smooth and none would be the wiser heehee).
I didn't get what i'd call a perfect replica xD but i think I honored the spirit of the original design well, and while my stone knapped texture isn't mark-for-mark, it still worked out awesome. In any case my client is pleased, so I'll call this a success.
Interested in having your own custom one-of-a-kind pewter pendant sculpted and cast in pewter? DM me :D Commissions for a custom sculpt start at $100, which covers my time and materials (mold silicone & pewter being the biggest two expenses, and then little resource uses in polishing mediums, packing, etc).
I also have drawing commissions open, here! They start at $10 for black and white drawings and go up.
Ko-fi Commissions Open! Click to see Delicate Artisan Trash's commission menu.
hiya! do you by chance do pendant busts of snow leopards? i absolutely adore them and your artwork, so i thought it was worth a shot to ask ^_^
I have done them in the past! They're one of the pendants that will be brought back into rotation as I redo my molds. I've gotten some new equipment since I last made these and I'm hopeful I'll be able to pull finer detail from the mold.
A client commissioned me to sculpt and cast a replica of an arrowhead pendant dear to them, that had been damaged after the chain broke.
The starting sculpt (that actually had to be entirely re-done, because I was silly and didn't realize I could just sculpt a thin second back and laminate them together to preserve full details... so they got smushed too much when I sculpted the back-side D: I did the lamination method for the resculpt, and it worked like a charm.)
Here's the finished cast after being touched up by sanding, dremel, and hammering to really bring out the knapped-stone texture
-Most- of the pewter I make is done via a disc-shaped mold pressed between weights in a centrifuge we hand-pour the pewter into, then remove the casts and inspect and pull them off the sprew before they go through sanding and polishing and any further finishing steps; this one is unique, because it's a single-pour mold without centrifuge spinning. Everything my mom and I do is hand-done with the aide of powertools like the sanding machine, the tumblr, the centrifuge, etc-- but this one has even more fussy work to it.
I was expecting to get a lot more bubbles and pitting and to have issues with the two 'arms' of the arrowhead not filling in, or the corners of the lower arrowhead part, due to air bubbles-- I am so pleasantly thrilled the tiny mold cast darn near flawlessly! I made three casts, and chose this one as the best of them.
Next step is an acid bath and polishing it up pretty, then stringing it into a necklace, and sending it off to its new home :D
I really hope they like it. I like to think they will but dangit i never know until they has it
I've been working on miniature lion jawbone pendants and holy wow the mold WORKS. I'll be pricing this first run according to quality but anything pulled from the mold in the future will be sparkling perfect. It's a hefty piece roughly 2"x1.5"x1". I was going to split them down the center so the jawbones would lay flat, but I think it's juuust within the height limit to keep them as they are and simply attach a chain to wear.
I am going to finish a Smilodon gem eyed pendant or die trying.
…I am also going to finish a wolf gem eyed pendant or die trying. Going to go carve at that one after Smilodon for maximum fresh eyes. Hopefully it shouldn’t take TOO long…
Today was a really mixed bag in the casting department. 2.5 molds were ruined which was a LOT of wasted silicone and in both cases the failures were just...unlucky. So I get to remold the gem eyed wolf (not shown) and the Smilodon figurine. The test casts looked GREAT except for the stupid shoulder defect. Cast well right down to the little ears. So I'll sculpt those back on and push the tail back into place and try again.
My art has been massively impacted by what amounts to a nervous breakdown over the last several years, but this post is a good example of a whole other reason why my pewter work sometimes just disappears for months. It's a very finicky medium when you're pushing the limits of what gravity casting will allow and sometimes it just sticks out its tongue at you for the sake of it. I have no idea what caused the shoulder defect it just...showed up. Maybe an overheated bubble ripped it. And the wolf mold leaked silicone into the already cured front half ruining it.
Thankfully the moving jaw T. rex pendants were coming out like clockwork so I'll have seven of those for sale when I can get another pewter drop together. I love casting in pewter even if it gives me forehead rage veins sometimes.
