Display Time.

The day before hand in. It was time to put my work up and see how it looked. It was also the chance to work out where the eye line will be around the room, using my height cos I'm short and we have to cater for everyone haha. Then there was the question of how we were going to put them up. I was adamant that I wasn't going to use velcro, because I didn't want it to that stuck to it when I took them down and I didn't want to use pins/nails, because I didn't want holes in my work.

Getting On With It.

Tutorial, brushing, gluing and painting. We had our group tutorial today, it’s not the worst it has been, but when she said she preferred my first two paintings, I felt like it might has well have been said that I started off good but went downhill from there. I understand where she came from, I know my work doesn’t tend to stem from anything, other than the fact I like colour and shape, and I need to create things that enter my mind, either for them to be a success or just to get them out of my system. Any who, I had marshmallows and I was happy.

Oh, I bought some gold paint, this also excited me greatly! (Small things amuse small minds, hey?) I then proceeded to get a brush and brushed all of the loose sand an

d grit from my larger sculptures. Doing this my favourite part, if I could do that forever, I would! Due to my (more) sandy sculpture still crumbling, I decided to make up a water/glue solution (mostly glue) and coat that in it. I was planning to work on it somemore, however it took longer than I expected to dry properly.

Then I moved on to the most recent sculpture I created. With this I wanted to experiment with combining the colours, so as to maybe in a way, represent the project coming to an end and bringing all the work together. This was possibly a mistake, but again, I had to see whether it worked or not, so I wasn’t left wondering. I quite like keeping different shades of colour together, this probably, in my eyes, looks better than he mixture of colours. Ah well, at least I learnt.

You may be surprised to know that I shall be entering the territory of the studios tomorrow, on a Satuday! Crazy or what? A few of us will be clearing our spaces and painting the walls in preparation for the hand in.

Painting Sand.

Painting the sand valleys. Sounds interesting yes, but probably not as interesting as you may think, I hope I didn’t get your hopes up. Today I finally got round to painting the lines I carved out in my sculptures, these ones names are ‘Red Sand’, ‘Orange Sand’ and ‘Purple Sand’. Original, hey? You will have noticed I am not the best one for naming my art work. These names may not stick, but they’ll do for now. I had a really good, I don’t want it to all end next week. There’s still so much I want to do, but I know it won’t happen. I’m trying not to panic.

I started off the day by acquiring pva, a brush to put it on with and a brush now named ‘Sand Brush’ (it’s for brushing off sand - sculptors need these things haha). It felt good to buy something and not have to worry about if I can afford it or not for once. I mixed up a water/pva solution and gave my sculptures a couple of coatings of it, in the hope that it will stop the sand from crumbling much more (I found at the end that this did not help as much as I wanted it to). Then taking a colour at a time and adding a little pva to it, I painted in the carved lines. I took photos of the stages for each sculpture, you can see these on my Facebook page. It was very enjoyable to do and Clive helped with more options for my work set up to hand in.

I have discovered how nice it is to work without my shoes on in the studio (and no, my feet did not stink). I had to do this because I have blisters on my feet from walking loads in London yesterday. I shall hopefully explain more about that at the weekend. Tomorrow I plan to buy some gold paint. I am so excited about it! As well as that, I shall be working on my plaster sculpture I made on Tuesday, maybe it will be another good day.

Sculpture Workshop Take Two.

Sculpture Workshop No.2, with Simeon Nelson and once again I had a great day. I really do think that the people who did not attend really have missed out. You’ll notice that this sculpture is a different colour to the ones before. This is because we used a greater amount of plaster to sand, which made the structure much stronger and harder. To help fill space in the mould a post was placed inside, unfortunately it happened to be taller than me and made it difficult to handle once it was taken out of the sand. If I’m honest it looked like a giant match stick, so out came the wood saw and off came the excess post. Due to it being more solid, more effort was needed, so I borrowed a mallet and a chisel and then began to carve lines into the sculpture. The lines will be used in a similar way to my previous sculptures, so this work will be able to be related to my project. There was a lot of plaster left behind and I hope to use it to create some more work at some point, I’m hoping I don’t run out of time.

Carving Shape.

This is what I got up to today. I created these before hand, like a “here’s one I did earlier” type thing, you can read about it in my previous post. Thankfully the sand was still damp, I reckon I put too much water in and not enough plaster. Ah well, at least I know now. I was able to carve lines and shapes in to the sculptures thanks to Clives dentist tools and a spoon (I’m not joking, that’s what they were). What I have carved relate back to my paintings and when I get time, I hope to paint alone the lines with similar colours to them. Fingers crossed it will work and it won’t have been a waste of time because I have enjoyed doing them, they have been almost therapeutic (apart from the scary spider). And seeing as I never thought of myself as a sculptor, it looks like Simeons workshop was a success! We have another one tomorrow, so I’ll keep you updated of how that goes.

Sculpture Workshop.

Sculpture Workshop with Simeon Nelson. Near the start of the week we had to attend a workshop to do with sculpture. Just the word sculpture filled me with dread and before we it even started, I had assured myself it was going to be pointless. In my mind, I have never been a sculptor, ever! It wasn’t something I thought I enjoyed. But by the end of the day, my opinion had completely changed. It was actually so much fun and although quite physical, very fulfilling. The people who didn’t attend definitely missed out. I might become a sculptor as yet. The process didn’t take long to create, it also helped if you worked together. We started by digging out a hole of any shape, in wet sand. We then mixed up sand with plaster, in a ratio of 2 thirds sand to 1 third plaster, and added water, this part could go easily wrong, if there is too little or too much in it. The mixture is then poured into the hole at a consistant pace but not to fast. Then the waiting begins. It was exciting to find out what it would look like and also shaping it ourselves with tools was good too. I hope to do more sometime, possibly smaller ones, because this one was very heavy! And apparently I have a talent for shovelling sand, so if all else fails, you know where to go if you need sand shovelled haha!