Sandblasting Freddie Mercury

Today at Uni we were playing with the sandblaster, and creating images from blasting away layers of glass.

I thought I might do a photo of Freddie Mercury – my all time musical hero.

First I found a nice simple photo that I wanted to use on Google images, laid a nice piece of flashed glass on top and draw around it.

Flashed glass is a clear glass with a thin layer of colour on the top, so when you blast the colour away you get back to the clear glass beneath.

I quickly realised that drawing on the glass was a silly idea as I had to mask it off – so I cleaned the glass up, covered it with masking tape and started again.

This time I cut out the shape with a sharp blade.

After quite a lot of sandblasting – it takes longer than I thought to get through a 1mm layer of glass – my masking tape started to come away, so I called it a day at that point.

But, quite happy with this… not sure if it immediately shouts Freddie Mercury, but I know who it is  😊