Styrofoam base, acrylics, resin

Like many artists, I like to hold on to materials with project potential (I'm not a hoarder I swear) including 10 mirror tiles I found on the kerbside. Those things traveled with me interstate so I could create something interesting yet still functional. Between larger projects, I finally put one to use as a part of an experiment to repurpose styrofoam accumulated during the moving process. It's an interesting material that opens a lot of opportunities for me as far as scale and weight, and the things people have made out of it is amazing.

Getting Into It

The idea for this was to create something basic to test the waters with the materials and not overdo the scope. I wanted to feature a creature that looked like it was either interacting or a part of the mirror. A loose, gooey and drippy creature ended up being my choice. With a napkin-quality concept sketched out, I measured up the mirror tile and drafted a to-scale sketch to overlay on the mirror.

Cutting shapes from the foam was a challenge due to the asymmetry of the material and lack of heat tools. I ended up going barbarian mode on it with a handsaw and refined things further with sanding.

I made my first mistake trying to stick together separate pieces of styrofoam with a glue containing solvents (eg superglue) and no research before hand. This effectively ate through the pieces, causing me to redo it. I had much more luck with a spray adhesive on the second time.

Adding Details

I had fun experimenting to create some appropriately googly 'follow-me' eyes for my slime child. These were made out of a thumb tack, googly eye and resin casting from a round mould picked up from Daiso. While I mostly love these, I haven't properly polished the resin, dulling the overall effect.

Painting and Presentation

Given I melted my first few pieces of styrofoam, I was much more cautious about what to use to paint and finish the piece. Fortunately I had no issues with painting, which mostly consisted of a few layers with an airbrush and some brushed details. Everything was then sealed with a gloss polyeurothane spray which nicely strengthens the surface. I created a simple MDF backing to support the structure and to attach mounting fixtures to.

This was a fun little side project and I'm looking forward to using the rest of the mirrors and seeing what else I can do with styrofoam. I really want to use it as a base to create creatures at a larger scale sometime. I've also since picked up a proper foam cutting tool which is very satisfying to use.