Weeks:
Studio Documentation
Week 3 (11th - 15th Oct)
Further Charcoal Experiments
I wanted to experiment with more charcoal. I feel that charcoal creates movement easily within a drawing because it can easily smudge.
Instead of swirling, I sketched little circles and long curved lines. I developed a technique (shown on the right) to draw the shape repetitively, and each time, I smudge the charcoal line.
I think the experiments gave a movement effect, but it wasn't what I was looking for. I might use charcoal again in future experiments, but I don't want grayscale in my pieces in the project.
Hand painting Experiments
I didn't know where to move forward from my experiments. I decided just to get down paint onto paper. I felt that a paintbrush was too tedious and made the paint onto the paper slower, so I used my hands.
I decided to stick with swirls and circles that have been constant in experiements from the beginning of my project. I did a hand painting that kept more distance with the colour and another which blured by white paint. Between the two experiements they both create an interesting outcome. I like the messiness of both experiments and how the colours work depending on how you apply the paint.
I moved on to trying this technique onto coloured paper. I felt like it was an easy way to create variation.
I'm going to keep these experiments to use for another future experiment. It was a great exercise doing these hand paintings in an attempt to place paint to look organic.
I wanted to use this hand painting technique on plaster on paper experiment that I did last week. I wanted to add colour to the piece. I thought that using my fingers instead of a paintbrush would give a random outcome as the colours of the paint can't go into small crevasses of the rough, thick plaster swirls as my finger is too big.
I think that placing the paint with my figures only make the texture of the plaster more visible. I felt that putting the colour with my fingers still made it too intentional to place it with a brush. I suppose the next time I try a plaster painting; I'll let gravity do the work.
Plaster on canvas
After trying plaster on paper, I wanted to try it on a canvas. I see another student in my class that uses plaster often that always puts a plaster on a hard sturdy surface. It was my first attempt trying it out. Apply the plaster very thickly, creating thick swirls with rough texture (video of touching the dry plaster).
Just further finding out plasters properties and how best to manipulate it.
Sculpture - Base
My experiments have led to a direction where I feel that sculpture was the right way to go. I don't have any experience with sculpture at all therefore I booked a session with a tutor without a plan in mind but based it on the experiments that I have been doing in the past week.
We first created a base for the structure. The plan is to add terracotta clay around this creating a tall organic sculpture.
Sculpture - Adding clay
Since the base of this structure was wood I had to cover it with tape before adding clay to stop the wood from absorbing the water.
The aim of placing the clay was to cover the base entirely. I had a general shape to work with. I covered the wood and moulded the clay around any wire protruding.
This was the whole base I was starting with, and the plan was to add more clay making a pronounced shape.
I added more shape to the clay. I was playing around with the curvature of the form. I tried to make it so that every time you turn the piece or walk around it, the shape is different each time. I included loops to look through and even clay on the wire to see it would stay on.
I like how the sculpture turned out. I tried to match the movement of the wire into the body of the sculpture. Everything that I intended for the sculpture was made, and it worked so well especially in composition overall.
In sad to say that I know that this sculpture can't be permanent as the heat would make the metal wire explode in the kiln.