Sculpting Hair

To create hair for my ‘Simulated Self’ sculpture, I decided to purchase a wig with a similar hairstyle and use it as a base to construct the hair for the figure. I thought that maybe with initial coats of hairspray to fix the style and many, many, many coats of paint and glue, it would create a suitable rigid hair piece.

In a previous sculptural project, I had used a similar approach and coated strands of white hair fibre with wax to create the hair.

Wax sculpture of ‘Self-Portrait #2: Site of Infection’ with hair created from wax coated hair fibres.

Materials each have their own unique properties and consistencies and alas, the move from wax to a glue/paint mixture resulted in a rather terrible hair glug mess of tangled and matted fibres. To salvage the wig and work, I resolved to use the tangle as a scaffold for sculpted hair.

First, I added additional structure using Bondcrete (I love that stuff) and tissue paper. I then added a base layer of epoxy clay and slowly built up the hair structure as the underlying layers cured. I ended up using two types of epoxy clay Free Form Sculpt and Apoxie Sculpt. Both are two part epoxy clays that work really well in being able to retain and sculpt fine detail with a very hard final cure. They can also be smoothed with water, which is great for achieving a more even outcome.

We were overall happy with the final outcome, but next time I will definitely map out a different action plan to limit the time and materials spent on just making hair.