Sculpture

Resin Casts/Armatures/Final clay piece. Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

| harussell1
In this workshop we took elements of what worked in our sculptures and made it into casts.I had taken a series of close up photo’s of my sculptures and decided to focus on features such as vessels had made in the clay,the folds of the clay and the shape of the holes in one of my sculptures.I also decided to look at the form of one of my sculptures too which had a very femine form which i felt related to the vessel like shape and to combine these two shapes together.

I had to remind myself of how to create these shapes in order for them to have the desired effect in the resin.On the first piece i forgot to invert the folds in order to make them come out so did this on a second attempt.
I feel that the most simple cast using the vessel form and femine shape was the most effective and therefore I decided to make three armatures based on this shape using a mixture of chicken wire,hessian and thick plaster mix to give a more textured approach. I created a big piece and two smaller,one free standing and i cut the chicken wire at the bottom of the smaller piece and bent it and did the same with the larger piece altho this may not be the best approach due to the height and i proberly should of added more plaster to the bottom in hindsight.
  • Vessel like shapes created on the back
  • ‘Folds started to have an almost ear like quality about them.
We were then asked to take our favourite medium and favourite qualities from the pieces we have made and to make a ‘resolved’ piece. Iniatially I aimed to make a clay piece based on the vessel shapped pieces but I really struggled to get the form right and the piece kept becoming too ‘top heavy’ again. I then turned it onto it’s side and when i did this was reminded of the fold shape that I had been using also and decided that this natural development within the process had worked to my advantage and therefore decided to move with this and created lots of these folds on top of two hole like shapes whilst adding in the vessel type shapes at the back.This taught me to be less precious about my work and to experiment more as felt that there was a more sucessful outcome from this and the mixture of techniques worked well.
A collection of everyones works together.I thought it was interesting to see everyones different techniques and pieces together.

Working in clay. Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

| harussell1

In this workshop we were introduced to a variety of techniques that can be used when sculpting clay.These techniques included hitting the clay with blocks of wood,punching it, and sculpting it with wire. We were reminded not to make the sculpture too ‘top heavy’ which is something I really struggled with and it seemed the more I tried not to the more it happened.The soloution I found to this was often to turn the sculpture onto it’s side.

As you can see from the images above each technique had a very different outcome.After our first initial technique of punching the clay we had to respond by drawing it and then make another piece.Continuing with the developmental loop.I think the two techniques I liked the most and found to be the most sucessful was using the sticks and the wire.

I found that there was a very relaxing meditive quality to working hands on with the clay and really getting involved with the medium.It was pretty unpredictable to work with but gave some interesting results.

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

| harussell1

Due to us spending next week at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop we were given an induction where we were introduced to all the diferent machines within the wood workshop.We were then asked to do practice pieces using these machines before being given several pieces of wood and asked to make a final piece using the equitment provided.

I felt quite aprehensive about using the machines as it’s not an environment that I am used to and there is alot of danger attached to using these machines should you loose focus or not follow the safety guidelines.Over the course of the afternoon tho I did start to feel slowly more confident.

Final piece.Decided to go for something very simple based on one of the shapes produced during my 2D work and hung as a final piece.The triangles used very thin wood and would be quite intricate to cut on the bandsaw so decided to use a table saw as a normal saw seemed to be too heavy and splintered the ends of the triangles.Forgot to sand the triangles which you can see by the rough edges.

We got to have a sneak peek at an exhibition currently taking place within the sculpture workshop and also work in progress which included a pair of (legally aquired) silver casted swans wings which could of been interpretted as angels wings.Also alot of bronze/silver casted items that looked like they belonged to a movie set such as a giant set of horns,gas mask,shoes.We were encouraged to talk to artists using the workshops to find out about the processes they are using in order to inform our own processes.