The first of our Tech Demos was using polystyrene to make bread. Polystyrene is a suitable material to use here as it can be easily cut to shape, is inexpensive and bread doesn’t have a lot of detail on it. Fine detail would be hard to achieve using expanded polystyrene; however it would be easier to do with polystyrene sheet.
To make the bread I started with a block of expanded polystyrene and drew on the rough shape of an old style loaf of bread. I cut out the shape on the ban saw, and then made the block round using rasps.
Once I was happy with the shape of the bread I used round files and rasps to create grooves in the top of the bread to give some detail and realism. Then using sand paper I smoothed out the polystyrene. Whilst doing this I made sure that I was only moving the sand paper in one direction, otherwise this would have caused more problems.
When I was happy with the final shape I applied a layer of muslin to the bread using PVA glue. During the demo there was an example for us to see, this was a lot smoother than the surface of my bread. To achieve this effect I am going to apply a second layer of muslin to my bread and then sand down the lumps.
After discussing this with my tutor I changed my plans:
It would be better to paint the bread first with 2 layers of thick white paint. This will give my bread an undercoat for the brown colour to come next. Also it will mean I can sand down the paint, rather than the muslin as this would become stringy and start to look worse than before.
After waiting for the first layer of muslin to dry I applied a second layer anyway. This will make the bread stronger and able to withstand handling more.
Once this had dried I applied the first coat of white emulsion paint. The image below shows the bread at this stage: As you can see I have placed the bread on a piece of softwood, this is to stop the bread getting stuck to the newspaper I’m using to protect my desk.
I applied 2 coats of brown paint to the bread after this. The brown I used came out slightly darker than I wanted, however I can say that it is brown bread and so the colour doesn’t matter. I have then painted a light grey colour onto the top of the bread, this is to give the effect of flour that is sometimes used on bread once its been baked.
Overall
Looking at my bread I think that it has gone well for a first attempt. It resembles what the style of bread should look like and I kept close to my original drawn out size. However it doesn’t look real. This could be due to the paint job I have done on it or the texture of the bread.
If I have the time I could redo the bread and spend more time on the muslin to prevent any lumps and wrinkles appearing. Also, whilst painting the bread I was going by imagination, it would be helpful to have a similar loaf of bread available to look at so that I can get the colours right.
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