Caricature Sculpture

We got to sculpt the model and caricature him! It was a ton of fun and extremely relaxing. The time flew by as we did it and I heavily enjoyed the process.

I was on the fence about adding eyes but I really liked, from my position at least, how the light was coming from above and casting a dark shadow because of the eyebrows I made. I decided not to put any and (if lit correctly) gives it this feeling he's looking pretty far. I really digged this assignment!

Seahorse Jazz - Character in Setting

Final painting assignment involved making a scene with a character in it. We were allowed to do it with any medium and even take it farther by using cut outs and make it more of a conceptual piece. 

At first I couldn't decide whether or I wanted to make it a painting with an acetate overlay or cut out due to time constraints. With a last minute decision I decided to do it as a cut out because I knew I would regret not trying it.

So here it is done with watercolour paper, watercolour, and gouache:

Seahorse Jazz

I really like how the seahorses turned out in terms of design and construction, I like the silhouettes the most. I really enjoyed going back, cutting out and painting more details on it. I also made sure that in order to give it some 3 dimensional feel to it, I curled the tips of the paper just a bit so that they stick up a tad and only glued small areas so that gaps were still present. The seaweed in the foreground is elevated a bit using small pieces of foam core. Foam core was also used for the border. I knew hoarding extra foam core from previous projects in VCA would come in handy!

Some close ups:

Inspiration obviously from Brittney Lee and Mary Blair, I wish I could be at their level...someday...someday...

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.

Wood Sculpture - "Bronco"

(Finally got photos of the entire piece!)

So for my final sculpture last semester, we had to create something out of wood. The first thing I thought of was "Art Deco styled oversized chess piece as a staff head". So what did I end up making? An Art Deco styled staff with an oversized chess piece as a staff head.

This was the first time I was working with wood so I had no clue what I was doing. At all. I kept asking my teacher, woodshop teacher, and friend (Thanks Jesse!) throughout every step of the way, making sure I wasn't going to mess up.

So here's the staff head chess piece with the original drawings and final:

I was aware that I would lose the detail I wanted but I still enjoy the sketches I made.

Here's the staff in full glory:

+12 Agility

I wasn't sure I would have time to create the handle and already prepared a backup installation of just the chess piece but several people pushed me into doing the staff, and I'm glad they did. I'm also thinking of painting it in black, there were suggestions of certain kinds of paints to use but nothing for sure yet. For my first time working with wood and its related variety of tools, I think it was a success. Especially that I have all my fingers still intact. 

Poker Hands

For my 3D class we had to do a sculpture in plaster. A large majority of people seemed to be doing hands because it was the most accessible and manageable thing to work with, but I didn't want my piece to seem like every other person's piece that used hands.

I had no clue what to do yet even after creating one hand but an awesome idea came into my head one morning that made use of the hand that I already created: hands playing a card game. I wanted to do something with cards, such as hands shuffling or performing a magic trick, but I wanted to make use of the 3D space and how a sculpture is usually viewed in multiple angles. So with mine there are 3 ways to see it:

- The poker game in progress

- Player 1's perspective

- Player 2's perspective

Which is the reason why the hands end at the wrists, so it's as though the viewer takes the role of the player that they're looking at (thank you FPS games, you gave me inspiration).

Also this year they've been lecturing us about installation in most of our classes, so I wanted to be creative with that as well.

Anyway here it is:

As I was setting up my area a classmate of mine suggested the jackets on the chairs and even helped me set up a more intense game than what I had since my knowledge of poker is very very minimal. During critique it was suggested that I put it in the end of the year show (YAY!) with some changes such as:  green felt on the table, preferably a card table (I originally intended for this but didn't have one), black and red jackets on the chairs (to match the colours of the cards),  and poker chips (I was going to do this but I couldn't find any cheap poker chips since I didn't want to waste my money on something I would never use). I will definitely make the presentation much better at the end of the year show, which I'm still pretty nervous about.

Progress photos:

We had to cover whatever we were going to cast in wax first. Unfortunately no photos of my hand covered in wax because my other hand was covered in vaseline (which we needed to apply before the wax). Here's the wax mold filled with plaster already.

Then when the plaster had hardened, you take off the wax and voila! Any holes had to be filled some plaster then I sanded it down. 

END OF THE YEAR

Alright instead of doing one gigantic post, I decided to split each class into its own.

Digital Media

Life Drawing

3D

2D

Unfortunately, I couldn't find my paintings when I went to the art show this weekend (as well as other students telling me the teacher didn't bring in the assignments during the show into his office). So whether or not I do get them back and if I still have any interest in my terrible paintings, I will post them. If not I can post the drawings/sketches of them instead, although one works better as a painting.

3D

Our second project needed had to fit under one or more of the four given categories. All of which had to involve some sort human body part. Mine fit under the the hybrid, body fragmented and social commentary category. 

The sculpture portrays our reliance on technology and how it consumes us. I asked a few people and they either interpreted as either being consumed by technology (what I first saw it as) and other saw it as breaking free. 

I mainly wanted to use computer parts, especially wires for the arm section and keyboard keys and apoxie for a flesh-y look for some interesting contrast. The hand was made out of apoxie with a foil and wire armature. I was going for the whole zombie breaking through the dirt imagery, and the idea of using keyboard keys as the "dirt" came into my mind. The fingers were also going to be somewhat wirey but due to time constraints and the slightly larger than life size, it would have proven to be too difficult with very little space to work with in the fingers. 

Materials used: A pictionary electronic toy, an old power supply (which provided most of the wired and connectors), one keyboard. I also bought an optical drive but I couldn't get it to open for some odd reason, a waste of 5 dollars...

Overall I'm proud of it, could have used more keyboard keys and I liked the messy look I gave the fingers (looks like it's melting of sorts).

Close-up of the wire arm, this was pretty fun to do, but it took longer than I expected.

I hid my name with the keyboard keys, as well as the word "pwn" (not pictured).

It was also at the art show this past weekend!

Portfolio: Personal Work

So portfolio was last week, I handed mine in the first day. I'll have to wait until the end of the month until I get the results. I'm very proud of the work I produced for the portfolio (except the character design), although I'm hesitant to post it online right now.

I will post my personal pieces I attached for the "personal work" section though. One of my personal pieces was the hand drawings I had to do for Life Drawing, so I won't be reposting those.

Skeleton Study

I know I messed up on the pelvis, that was difficult to do along with the overlapping arm. As well as the foreshortening of the left leg was difficult.

Standing and Sitting Figures

This one I am VERY proud of. I've received a ton of compliments for it too, even from the model himself! The task was to draw the same model in both standing and sitting (clothed) poses. Drawing on kraft paper with the highlights, shadows and mid-tones were optional, since we had to do a drawing on kraft paper anyway. The kraft paper drawing I will post another time.

Rooster Head Sculpture

This took about 7 weeks to create, and we also had to create a sketchbook with studies on the animals we were doing. I may or may not post those notes, but I have some decent drawings of roosters in there. We also had to create texture on the sculpture. I had difficulty finding something similar to the bumpy look of the wattle. I went through several textures until I settled on using the towels used to cover the sculptures and keep them moist.

Moleskine

I'm only posting the best interesting pages. I've already posted one page not too long ago.

I like this page. I've had the idea of doing cardinal heads, but only showing the black pattern on their face on a red background. I tried that, but it didn't turn out so well. A watercolour background, red pencil crayon and marker got the job done. I also have a raccoon page similar to this I'm working on.

That's all for now. I'll post most of my portfolio soon, something about doing so now just makes me feel uneasy.