Balloon Twisting From Scratch 7 Skill 3: How To Curve A Balloon

Balloon Twisting From Scratch 7
Skill 3: How To Curve A Balloon
Equipment:
1 modeling balloon
1 pump
Level:
Very easy
The editorial and visual content of this tutorial is produced and
published by Pierrick Le Brun under a Creative Commons,
Attribution, Non Commercial, Share Alike license. You are entirely
free to share and publish it non commercially, in part or in whole, provided you clearly give
credit to Môssieur Ballon and provide a hyperlink to the original source of any content
used.
This photo tutorial is a companion piece to the video Balloon Twisting From Scratch 8 - Skill 3: How To Curve A Balloon
which you can also find on Môssieur Ballon's YouTube channel.
Now let's see how to give a curved shape to a segment of balloon.
It is an important skill to have because it enables you to refine the smaller details of your balloon models, which will make
them more realistic and more natural.
For example, this will enable you to mimic the rounded shape of a belly on a little dog, a teddy bear, or a penguin; the
curve of a flower's stem, or of a sword's blade, etc.
To go further, we will also see how to very simply make a spiral (there are other ways to do this but we will talk about
them later as they are a bit more complex).
Spiral-shaped balloons can be used to form the body of a snake, or even the suspension spring on a motor vehicle!
1- Take a balloon in both hands and
bend it, near the knot.
2- Rub both segments against each
other to move the crease
downwards,
3- then upwards, several times.
4- Keep going back and forth, all the
while guiding the balloon, and therefore
the crease where the friction is taking
place, forward between your hands
5- Little by little the balloon knot will
move away from your support hand
6- The idea is to make the whole
portion of inflated balloon go through
this movement of friction made by
your hands,
7- until the deflated tail end of the
balloon reaches your twisting hand.
8- With this method, you can get an
almost perfect circle.
9- To get a loop, the operation is
almost identical, except that you
shouldn't let go of the part of balloon
that is passing through this hand
movement.
10- You need to keep it compressed
in a spiral shape as you gradually
work on the whole length of balloon.
11- If it's too difficult to keep the
spiral compressed only with your
support hand, you can use another
part of your body to help yourself (as
seen in the video).
12- Once the whole length of the
balloon is compressed in the shape
of a spiral, firmly hold both ends of
the spiral in each of your hands,
13- and gently pull each end as far
apart from the other as you can, then
let go just as gently.
14- Once released, the balloon will
keep its spiral shape.
See you soon,
for another lesson...
with Môssieur Ballon!