Lost

Since first semester after hearing that we'll experiment with miniatures in second semester, the first thing that came into my head was a sculpture of a scene submerged in water. 

Throughout the semester we experimented with different kinds of sculpture from readymades, books, textiles and armature, miniatures and a couple more that I forgot in class.

Anyway our final could have been anything but I decided to stick to my idea and go with it. I struggled at first to create a composition that worked in water, most of what I was able to come up with didn't make use of it being submerged. I then had an idea, but when it came to buying supplies for it...let's just say miniature materials aren't cheap. At all. My wallet wept that day. 

So I changed that idea and worked with the supplies that I was able to buy and with the abundant materials I had, I made a second piece with similar themes of lost and loneliness. I used containers with an open top so that people can have a bird's eye view on the scene when they get close, as though they were peeking into this world that is confined in the space. I also made it (especially the second one) to be pieces that you could just place on a table as decoration.

Ta-da!

Marooned

No Stories to Tell

They were a hit! A lot of people liked them and a classmate of mine took many pictures of it. I was happy with how they turned out and I'm even more glad people loved them. I still have materials left over and even had a third one planned (same size/container as the smaller one) but due to time I wasn't able to finish it, so I'll probably make more.

***

I had a ton of fun making these and spent several days just working on them, putting in as much detail in the little space I had.  Here are some process pictures.

I first started by making the armature for the cliff out of foil. This was the most important part for 2 reasons: it needed to be in scale with the rest of my miniature pieces and it needed to fit in its container. For this one in particular, I needed the landmass to be able to be taken out and put back in when I filled it with water rather than resorting to using a funnel.

I used apoxie to sculpt the cliff because it's waterproof and I love apoxie. 

To paint I just used acrylic. I did many, many, many layers of paint on this and used a variety of different greens and browns to make it look natural. I asked if I needed to coat the paint with anything if I put it in water but my instructor told me it should be fine, which it was. To make the colour of the water I just took watercolour paint and mixed it.

Here's the second one painted and glued some pieces of bushes and the campfire with just regular old white glue. For this one I created holes for the trees to be placed in. In the final the trees are not glued and are able to be removed. The trees themselves were from a kit, all I had to do was paint the trunks of the trees and take clumps of the foliage material and hook it onto the branches.

Here's the final with the figure, which was part of a pack of hobo figurines. I created the rocks with the little bit of apoxie that I had left when I mixed it and painted them as well. After noticing how illogical it was for him to have a campfire surrounded by three trees, I threw in the rocks that I made into one of the holes. This one's shape was difficult to place into its rounded container and required me to do a scooping motion to get it in.