Clay not sticking to life cast - help?

Ashley Casteel

Hi - So this weekend I completed my first successful life cast and I prepped it per the instructions in the Hag makeup tutorial with acrylic paint and Alcote; but I'm finding that my clay (chavant medium) is not sticking to the surface.

You can see in the photo that the edges of the clay are coming up from the surface of the life cast. I'm not sure what to do about it? it seems the Alcote may have made the surface too smooth??

This is my first time doing this and I didn't hear Bruce mention it in any of the videos

The sculpt is still very rough but I wanted to figure this bit out before getting too far.

Is there something I can do to make the clay or surface more tacky?

Ashley Casteel

So today I warmed up the life cast a bit with a heat gun and now it seems to be sticking ... Guess that was the problem. Can't figure out how to delete this question sooo disregard- thanks 

Chris Ellerby

Hi Ashley,

Glad to hear warming the life cast up helped resolve your problem.  Release agents like Alcote can make things tricky, but you just have to work around them.  Hopefully your solution of heating things up continues to work.

I have no experience sculpting over Alcote, so I don't know any tricks.  But maybe someone else here does.  If you continue to have problems let me know, and I can reach out to our instructors to see if they have any advice.

/Chris