Experimenting with Moulding Clay

After doing research into the anatomy of teeth, the human skull, bruising and examples of real bite marks, I decided to start experimenting with moulding my own bite mark using clay. This is the positive that my mould will be make out of. 

Attempt 1

The four images below show my first attempt at making a bite mark prosthetic piece. I started off by warming up some of the clay in my hands so that I could mould and shape it more easily. I then applied it to the flat tray and started shaping it into a slightly 'C' shape to mimic the shape of the teeth line. I made sure there wasn't too much product on the tray because I didn't want the teeth indents to be too deep. I made sure all the edges were spread out and blended as seamlessly as possible so that when it would be applied to the skin, the edges would blend well into the natural skin. I then took a wooden tool with a small flat edge and started pressing it into the clay where I wanted to add some teeth. I tried to make the ones in the middle bigger and then made them subtly smaller as they go out, however I found it difficult to shape the teeth marks to the shapes I wanted. I then did the same for the bottom teeth, but made them smaller with a smaller piece of clay. I then added a slightly raised bump in the middle of the two teeth marks to act as swelling and then smoothed out all the edges until  was happy with how smooth they were. 

I like that the edges of the clay are blended out smoothly and that they aren't straight lines because I think that would make the edges more easy to detect when on the natural skin. When I added the teeth indents to the clay, I didn't really look back at any images of bite marks or look at any teeth diagrams closely enough and so they didn't look very realistic at all! When I do my next sculpture, I will make sure I either use a different technique or make sure I am constantly looking back at my research to make them look as realistic as possible. I'm not sure whether I want to keep the swelling when I actually make my mould because I haven't decided on the age of my bite yet and that will determine how much swelling or bruising there would be. 

Attempt 2

I didn't find the wooden tool very easy to use so I decided to just bite into the clay with my own teeth, because then at least I knew it would look as realistic as possible! I bent the plastic in half and then bit into the clay with my top and bottom teeth and I am really happy with the outcome! I then cut away any excess clay and smoothed down the edges. I also added a lump in the middle where the swelling may appear, but again, I don't know if I will include that in my final design because I haven't yet decided on how old my bite mark will be. 

 I am really happy with how this clay mould came out! I love that I can use my own teeth to create the teeth marks because it looks so realistic and true to size. I would like to experiment with using different people's teeth too, to see if I prefer the teeth to be perfectly straight or whether I think it looks more realistic if the teeth were more crooked. I am happy with how I smoothed the edges of the clay, however to make the edges even more faded I would like to experiment with using a hair dryer to make the clay more manageable. I think I will us this outcome to make a mould and then I will create another one without the swelling in the middle to see which one I think looks most effective. I may also try to make the clay closer together to that I can get more of my teeth in the clay, to look more like the images that I researched.