Printing on 3D objects for Helms of Awesome

Overview

At Frogman's 2009, I took a lot of notes from a class taught by printmaker and graduate professor Dennis McNett of [howlingprint.com[howlingprint.com]] In addition to standard printing methods, he's gotten into making simple skeletal shapes with cheap materials and covering them in his prints to give them texture. Now that I'm back home I want to make such a sculpture, specifically a wearable costume helmet. It's going to look a little like paper mache, but it' smuch sturdier and the reproducable nature of printmaking gives a very distinct textural look compared to painting.

Materials

Cheap soft wood Screws Power Drill Chicken Wire Something to Cut Wire Cheap bond paper Prints - preferably something that resembles texture Archival glue - rice paste, lyntex, etc Shin cole` - consult with Tabatha on this one.

Process

1- Build your framework, a basic skeleton of the shape you desire. Arrange your wooden bones and then screw them into place accordingly. Screws will hold much better than nails.

• Make the skeleton as firm or as shaky as you want.
• For wearable sculpture, take careful measurements for limbs and joints, leave yourself room to move about.
  • Consider tearing up foam padding or egg crate for comfort

2- Wrap the skeleton in chicken wire. This will act as the first layer of 'skin.' You can use additional wood scraps to add width or heft as necessary. 3- Wrap the chicken wire in cheap bond paper, or some facsimile. This is a surface to which you can apply an adhesive. 4- Print your textures and graphics to act as the visible skin of the sculpture. Note that you may need to tear down the prints and textures to match up with the angles and facets of your sculpture's surface. 5- Apply your archival adhesive to the bond paper with a broad gesso brush 6- Wrap the texture skin around the bond paper, which should now be very sticky 7- apply a layer of substrate to act as a shin cole to smoothe the various pieces of paper, giving it a consistent unified glossy sheen 8- Wear it around, and be kick-ass