Attempt number 2!

This week for Moulage Monday I have attempted to improve upon last week’s open knee wound.

I am still not 100% happy with this attempt. I prefer it to the last one however there are still things I would like to change.

I feel that I managed to get the appearance of depth in this one better than in the last however I still feel I could have gone further. I like the dent that is seen in the centre of the wound and would like to take this even further on my next attempt. I feel that I was not quite confident in how this would look by the end of the application when I was applying the silicone but in hindsight, it is the exact look I was going for and therefore I will be far more confident doing this in my next application.

Furthermore I feel that the more organic shapes created within the right hand side of the wound could have been given a smoother appearance as to me they feel a bit choppy and unfinished. The sharpness of these shapes caught on to the colour and blood when applied and highlighted the shapes further which I don’t like, for this reason on the next application I intend to go back in after the silicone has been initially applied to smooth these shapes further. There are a few ways that I may be able to achieve this however I will need to experiment to see what works best.

I am really pleased with the skin texture that I achieved around the wound. I added this in using a range of different tools once the sculpt gel had started to cure. Waiting for the silicone to cure slightly before adding this texture allowed me to be a little more heavy handed with my tools and meant that the shapes that I had built up did not displace during this process. This is a technique that I regularly use and will continue to use in the future as I have found it one of the best ways to create natural looking texture in silicone relatively fast without getting hung up on creating ‘perfect’ shapes within the lines and wrinkles.

Another thing I was really pleased with in this application was the dried blood effect around the edge of the wound. My reference photo showed dried blood smeared around the edge and it is evident that the wound had been slightly cleaned up and possibly dressed before the image was taken. For this reason I chose to use my favourite drying blood from Fleet Street Bloodworks in the colour dark and I applied it with a mixture of my spatula, a coarse sponge and some kitchen roll. I applied the blood messily and then wiped the wound with kitchen roll as I would if it were a real wound; this helped create the natural looking dried blood effect that I was aiming for.

When building up this wound I applied the sculpt gel in two layers. The first to build up the basic shapes focusing on the inside and the second layer to build up the skin that forms the edge of the wound. I found this to be a good way to do it but next time I am going to colour the first layer of silicone a fleshy pink colour before I apply as I think this will help make the colouring of the flesh far more realistic than just applying the colour on top.

Overall I definitely think that this attempt is better than the last but there are still improvements to be made to make this makeup the best that it can be.

Thank you for reading, please let me know if you have any questions, comments or suggestions!