Cassandra Phillips: Scenic Artist
 
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Last week, we opened our new musical, The Unfortunates.  So , we needed to put the final touches on a few of the props.  Namely the hands.  The Unfortunates employs two sets of hands for Big Joe.  Our awesome props artisan Annette Julian sculpted and cast giant realistic fists out of silicone.  In addition, a set of fists that open into hands needed to be made.  A tall order, even for us.   But luckily, Annette, our local genious, came up with a fantastic solution: a mechanical robot armature that allows each finger to flex and release with the pull of a handle inside.  Unfortunately, the flexible armature of the fingers could not be covered with the same silicone material that the palms and fists were due to their need to stretch and retract.  Annette used a stretchy foam witch worked great but didn't match the texture of the silicone.  The task was given to me to make these two very different materials look similar under stage light.  

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The most obvious difference between the two surfaces were their textures.  So, the first thing I tried to do was make the transition a little more fluid between the two materials.  I used a clear, flexible texture gel to fill in some of the holes of the foam while softening the edge of the silicone.  

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Next, I mixed a color to match to flesh tone of the silicone palm, and painted the texture paste, blending it into the rest of the foam a little bit.  



Now we have two surfaces with a common base.  The next step was to shade the skin similarly on both materials to make them blend into one.  


Not much sticks to the silicone, so we opted to use inks instead of paints to shade the skin, and denatured alcohol as a medium.  I used the fists as a model for how to color the hands.  
Below, you can see the final result.  A natural looking hand- and you can barely see the transition between materials!  

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Cassandra Phillips: Scenic Artist