Altered Vessels Studio

So I accidentally started ivy’s build – really it’s ii and iii’s fault because their paint was taking too long to dry and I was itching to keep working so I started thinking about his mask and how to hide the Darth Maul horn on his fourhead (😉).

Pop vinyls that will be used in this build: 740 – Darth Maul (head) and 1418 – Louis de Point du Lac (body) 295 – H.E.R (‘guitar’).

I’ll post the full inspiration post for the look separately and link it back here for future reference. It’s basically his pinstripe suit look. I am a sucker for a man in a pinstripe suit so it just had to be the first build for him. I really want to do his battle jacket look with some little accessories like the red devil horns headband and panda hat and a stack of other looks. I think I’m up to about 3-4 versions of each band member so far so I’m going to be busy for the foreseeable future!

It’s so interesting to study these masks in detail. For example I had no idea that there are little base clefs, a leaf and maybe a little skull hidden in the craggy details (you can click the images to enlarge the detail). I’m in absolute awe every time I need to study the detail to try and replicate them on my lil Pops. The scale is another thing that is really messing with me. Because the Pop has such a wide rectangular head it’s hard to translate and copy the right proportions and scale so I spend a lot of time nitpicking the detail til it’s correct in my eye.

I start by smoothing a thin layer of clay that I rolled out with my pasta maker over the face. And then promptly started wasting time mucking around with the eye holes and the tiny shape cutters I have. It turns out that the circle is the perfect pop eye size!

I do a rough pass to get the shapes down and roughly textured. I then refine and nitpick it to death. It’s a process of looking at it from all angles then just refining every detail while you cross check it with the reference photo til you’re happy with it. I was going to put the bass clef in relief but it just looked a bit naff so I carved it in instead.

I toyed with the idea of just using a cricut decal for the tiny sigil in the middle of his Fourhead but as it is carved in there (and I was in a rabbithole of nitpicking) I thought I’d at least give it a go and see how crap I can make it. The answer is a lot. Behold!

Then comes the smoothing. I’ve found that using isopropyl alcohol and either a small paintbrush or the pointed rubber smoothing tool (and occasionally my fave dental tool) really helps smooth out all the edges and removes finger prints and tool marks. There are clay softeners sold everywhere but really this works just as well at a fraction of the price and I haven’t seen any detrimental effects on the clay after baking. Apart from looking sooper smoooth.

After he’s all smoothed out then off for a little quality time with the oven for a lil 15min bake at 130 degrees.

While he’s cooling down I’m going to work on finishing ii and iii’s paint jobs as they’re nearly finished! I did try to freehand pinstripes on his suit and it turned out poorly so I’m going to make some sort of stencil or guide so it doesn’t look completely povo. Pretty happy with how he’s turning out so far!

Worship! 🖤