The power of deflation is well known among balloon artists. Leaving the tail of a balloon uninflated allows you to twist it; using uninflated balloon can add detail to a sculpture — like the parrot on this CD which uses pieces of leftover balloon for eyebrows.
But you can also use a deflated balloon to make very interesting shapes. Sometimes you just don't want all the bubbles to show — you want the shape. A body isn't a bunch of bubbles; it's a shaped solid object. You can create the shape you need, then wrap a balloon around it and deflate it. It will take the shape of the object inside. Many thanks to Patrick Brown who first made me think about using this for twisting sculptures.
Mostly done with large-diameter balloons, since you have to insert objects inside them and then deflate them. Airship balloons work very well for this.
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1 Distortion is an old technique in the decorator business. This head is made by deflating a large 3' round around 5 smaller rounds. The 3' round is not completely deflated, but you can see the cheeks and chin sticking out. This clown was made at Eurojam 2000 by Birgit and Mark Osborne.
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2 The dog face has a flat tongue by wrapping a 160 loop inside a 350, forming a flat-shaped tongue.
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3 If you wrap this simple 160 figure into 2 × 524Q's (wrapping from both ends)…
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4 …you end up with this phone.
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5 This monkey uses a partial wrap for the mouth to have the lips just sticking out. For the rest, it's the same monkey as on this CD-ROM. The eyes are of course a very well-known "power of deflation" technique.
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6 Sometimes the power of deflation is caused by accidents. When making this monkey head the cheeks accidentally deflated. Eyes next to the nose made it look more natural. The lips are filled but not fully inflated balloons.
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7 This clown head has a deflated nose. The power of deflation is used here to alter a bubble's colour without tying in a new balloon — by wrapping another balloon around it.
