Stretching My Rhenoflexing Fingers

Today I tried using the rhenoflex myself for the first time on the finished sculpt of Nala. I first covered the sculpt in small, contoured pieces of foil to protect the buff clay underneath and stop it from cracking from the heat of the gun and plastic. It can be challenging because it is so hot - using heat proof gloves is only relatively better than getting burnt, because they are so huge that it's difficult to have the dexterity to even pick the pieces up, let alone form them - and the adhesive in the rhenoflex loves to stick to the fibres in the glove's material.
Regardless, I set about patterning Nala's finished sculpt by holding newspaper over the area that I wished to cover, then using a thick marker to feel out the edges of the shape. This was then cut from the plastic, heated up and formed onto her.  I found it easiest to join pieces by using a wooden tool to press the edges of the top piece of plastic into the lower piece, melding the two together.

Nala after being covered in aluminium foil to protect the sculpture.

Cutting out the upper nose section of Nala's head. The rhenoflex cuts fairly easily with scissors.

The first three pieces of Nala's head formed over the sculpt and attached to each other.

I also did a paint test on the sample Fiona had created to show us how to use the thermoplastic. She had shown us the process on Lorraine's antelope head maquette, and I wanted to use it to help us decide how to paint the finished pieces. I covered one side of the piece in gum tape, and left the other side raw, just coating it with a layer of acrylic. From this it was clear that we would have to cover all of the masks with gum tape - it looked so much neater and smoother, as well as being more natural and a more appropriate base colour than the light, slightly glittery blue of the rhenoflex. It also proved quite difficult to get an even coating of paint on the raw rhenoflex surface; the embedded mesh made it too easy to create inequalities if the paint either pooled in a section of mesh, or bubbled over the surface and popped, leaving it bare. It would have taken many coats to get a good covering.