MAKING MARLEY: PART 3

Wax: With a set of wax castings, I started the finish work. I needed a resin head to make sure of a good fit into the body and so finished the head first. Next, I worked the hands and created temporary keys into the sleeves. With a resin of the head and hands, I concentrated on finishing the body. One of the beauties of wax is being able to work individual parts to finish and then wax-weld them into place. I don’t think I could have gotten the kind of movement and finish on the torso if I would have had to work around the arms. With the arms and torso done, I reassembled the figure, finished out the seams and was ready for molds. The bandaged head of Marley became the gape jawed Marley. I wanted to keep as much consistency between the two heads as possible, and so used the original head as the base for the alternate head. Having resin parts to work to a wax makes keying parts much easier. The head, hands, and ponytail were all resin parts keyed to a wax.