Well i've played around a bit with friendly plastic. A couple of simple broach type ideas, which worked. I bought a butterfly mask as i simply love the shape and have several ideas for masks. I covered the mask in tin foil, to be honest it wasnt as smooth as i wanted, the foil kept tearing, so it was layered in several places. For some reason i had wrestler masks in my head at the time, similar to the ones the mexican high flyers wear. I cut several strips of FP and a few shapes. I like how the first few strips came out.
I'm learning a fair amount by trial and error really, but in my opinion the best way for any artist, only so much you can learn from books and the like. Lesson 1. my heat gun gets really hot, very quickly. So i'm adapting how far away i hold it. Lesson 2. Joining using the heat gun doesnt always come out the way i want, the colours blend unevenly or the black under strip comes through. So some form of hot water method has to be looked at. Lesson 3. Constant re-heating of the plastic as i add more to the mask, it simply distorts the first plastic parts more, fine if i want a free-form or a mask i'm going to colour again. Not if i want a block/smooth colour one. Lesson 4. Finger prints. No matter how hard i try not to touch the plastic i kept getting them. I use my palatte knife with a bit of water which helps, as do my embossing tools, but sometimes i prefer smoothing my hand. Gotta work on that.
As an alternative material, friendly plastic has many possibilties. My one issue is keeping the surface smooth and less 'plastic looking'. I know sounds weird as it's....well plastic haha. But many surface finishes can be used to make it look like othe materials, i just need to perfect the heating method so it heats evenly and doesnt distort so much.
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