Sometimes, no matter what I do from day to day, it always seems like I end up doing the same thing over and over again. I’ve been feeling the urge lately to carve something. I’ve been playing around lately with mold-making and weighing the pros and cons on the expensive materials needed to experiment. Mold-making is easy. It’s simple. But it can be expensive. It can be even more expensive if you don’t do the research needed for your specific project. I had been in a auto dealership recently and saw a pretty cool sculpture on the wall. The idea seemed pretty cool to me, so I decided to duplicate it myself. My project would be to sculpt the prancing horse icon by Ferrari. I did my research and proceeded to choose the material for sculpting. I’ve read a lot of articles lately on people who have been using foam insulation board for sculpting and signage. I thought that was a great idea, considering it was relatively cheap and readily available from most home improvement stores. So here’s what I did….

I went to Home Depot and purchased a 4′ x 8′ sheet of the pink EPS foam insulation board. I cut two pieces at 16″ x 30″ and glued them together with “Gorilla Glue.” I let that sit for 24 hours to allow for plenty of drying time. Then I plotted a rough drawing on several pieces of paper and used that to trace the image onto the insulation. After that, the foam went to the band saw for rough cutting. The majority of the carving is done with the Dremel Multi-Max and quite a bit of sandpaper. When I’m satisfied with the final shape, I use a special urethane hard-shell coating that makes the foam rock hard. I will use this sculpture to produce mold #1 of my final sculpture. Check back for Part 2 when I make a new mold using silicone rubber!