Handy work...

Progress on the model has been slow over the last few days but today I did some work on the hands. First I tidied up the wadding with some more cotton thread. I want to make them as smooth as a can so that when I dip them in latex I get a better finish. I went over them again, this time with embroidery thread (as I wanted to use something thicker than normal thread) to fill the gaps in the wire where it had been twisted. Finally (although I forgot to take a photo of it) I went over them with some very thin ribbon so try make the surface even smoother.

I dipped the hands in latex the dried under the hand dryer to speed up the process. I did this 3 times. One of the hands will be curled into a fist so I'm not too fussed about the fingers, but for the other hand the finger sizes were a bit squiffy, so I added tips to the fingers using plasticine, then dipped them again, just the fingers this time, two more times (no photo yet though).

The next step is to add a layer of paint in a flesh tone then dip the hands again in latex, adding a thin layer to seal the paint in. I have chosen to colour the hands this way as adding dye to the latex can be tricky when trying to achieve a certain colour, and painting over the latex might mean the paint will crack when the latex bends and stretches. As the latex is shiny (and obvously human hands aren't) i'm going to try dusting them with face powder to take the shine off it. Using face powder rather than talc will mean I should be able to keep the flesh tone.