Out of this world project

Wiring Workshop 

One of the workshop areas covered was a wiring practical session. There were all sorts of different wires such as thin, thick, copper, aluminium and so on. 

 

As we were handed the wire, we had a choice to either make a sculpture related to our work or it could have been anything spontaneous. Instead of creating something spontaneous, I decided to choose some creatures I made out of food from my sketchbook.

After taken thought of which one of the animals I could decide to take on, I decided that the Antpple would be the best one. The Hot Doggy would have taken too much time, considering that our workshop only last for 1 day. 


Firstly, I grabbed a long strip of thick wire and wrapped it around a pair of tweezers to create a long but thin body to create a spine of the body. I then started to create lumps in certain areas of the body to define the head, neck and abdomen. 

After the torso of the body had been created, I went on and started to construct the legs of the ant. I had to attach and build the legs around the body because there was no way I could implant the legs inside the ant torso since it was too tight and tangled to work my way inside the body. So I wrapped thin wire to both legs and tightened the thin wire around segments of where the ant's legs would be. 

In order to make the ants eyes and antennas. I had to work around the ants head from the inside. What helped me in order to achieve this step was a pair of thin but strong tweezers. Here is the final outcome.

My thoughts on this sculpture is that I feel that I did create the anatomy of the ant to a standard degree. However If i had more time to work on this sculpture, I would have considered the thinness of the ant's body because my ant is quite a large/thick ant in real life. I also didn't create a shape of an apple to replace the ant's gastor. But having learnt from this, I feel that I may use wire as a tool for other upcoming pieces of work. 

Acrylic painting workshop

I also had a painting tutorial, mainly with acrylic paint and here I learnt how to mix colours and work with acrylic paint. In this workshop I created 2 pieces which were relevant to my previous ideas which I had in mind in my sketchbook. 

Mythical creature: the Phoenix

Fruit planet in space

This first image on the left is a phoenix painted using acrylic pens. I find it a lot easier to draw with since you can get fine lines with these pens. I just started to play around with the blue and red pens and made weird shapes and lines. 

The image on the right was painted with acrylic paint and drawn with paint brushes. Unlike the acrylic pens, you had to squeeze a dollop of the main paints (blue, red, yellow) and create your own colours. With paint brushes it's harder to manipulate the paint, especially when you're using water to lighten the paint. I also used a circle stencil and spray painted over it to create the light yellow effect behind the planet. I used a mix of reds and dark blue to create 'space' and created a scheme of a dark purple atmosphere. The idea behind this was that one of my initial ideas from the begging was to create a solar system out of space. And here it is rendered with acrylic paint. 

Experimentation

After attending a work check with my tutor, she has made it clear to me of what ideas I should stick with and which ones I shouldn't. I've decided to use the theme of food and interpret into everyday life. I had already played around with animals and used all sorts of fruit and vegetables to construct their bodies. However I wanted to try a different approach. 
Maybe I could use myself as an example? 

I took a picture of myself and played around with how I could use the fruits and veg to construct my face. I searched inside my fridge to see what sorts of food I could used and I grabbed a bunch. 

 

Here is the list of ingredients I gathered:
Cherry
Baby tomato
Lettuce
Sweetcorn
Orange
Broccoli
Carrot
Celery
Peas
Peppercorn
Slice of chicken breast

I gathered all of these ingredients within my fridge. However I didn't use all of them. Some of the fruits/veg I picked didn't work with the face I wanted to create.I felt that I would have been adding to much to the face just to fill some gaps. So I used the necessary ingredients I thought were applicable to the construct my face. 

Here is my first attempt.

Here I disfigured some of the fruit and veg to define certain features of the body. I thinly sliced a whole lettuce and started to construct the hair. I also cut off the crown of the broccoli and left the trunk because to me it portrayed a neck. 

In order to make the eyes I grabbed 2 pieces of peas and peppercorn and squeezed therm together so they became one item. And for all other pieces of food, I cut to form a shape of a face and facial features. 

Here is another example of what beings I'm trying to portray. I've have used junk food instead of vegetables and fruit because I thought I would expand my work and ideas to show a wide range of complex creatures/humans. In order to construct this chicken I used curly fries and chicken drumsticks and used beige paper to signify the chickens head and feet. All these ingredients were found in my freezer and this idea really does seem 'out of this world' 

After having discussed and shown my work to my fellow students, they have seemed to like my ideas and suggested that I should promote the safety and health of animals. Maybe I could gather more ingredients that come from animals to make people aware of animal abuse. 

Students have also suggested that I should use raw ingredients such as raw meat to emphasise the topic of animal abuse. I could also give a more gruesome yet realistic effect to my image. 

I then constructed a turkey out of food in my freezer which is made from farm animals. Not including the fries but I felt that the curly fries added another texture to the bird since they looked closest to feathers. I arranged the chicken breast in a certain position to signify the turkey's breast. By using the same method as I did with the chicken image, I constructed a turkey and this time made it look more realistic by focusing and studying more heavily on the turkey's anatomy on the internet. 

Here is a fish made out of fries and fish fingers. I found these other ingredients in my fridge as well and put them to use. I constructed a cod since the package on the fish finger displayed that this was made of 100% cod. There were all sorts of shapes that were in the French fry bag. You can see that there are long, thin, curvy types of fries - all shapes and sizes. I used the shapes to where I see fit within the cod and also placed the fish fingers in the manner and body of a fish. 

Mary the mother

I finally used the idea of using raw meat and combined it with my work. Here is the final outcome. I decided to give it some narrative behind the image. So I quoted 'Mary HAD a little lamb' and titled it Mary the mother to emphasise the true meaning of animal abuse. And of course to stick to the out of the world topic, I decided to cut pieces of lamb and construct its body. To emphasise my quote I used red water colour to display the word HAD. I also used high case letter to give it true meaning and emphasis. I would like to thank my friend Byongo for giving me influence for this piece - especially the quote. 

Here is a piglet constructed with ham. I decided to specifically potions the pig in a certain pose to give it a sort of subtle, yet innocent look to the piglet. With all of my previous pieces ,and this one also, I used Photoshop to enhance the colours and defined the quality of the picture. I lightened the ham quite significantly since in the original image, the ham was quite dull and colourless. 

I also researched more children's novels because I thought that the titles sounded friendly - yet had a sense of irony to them. So then I found a children's nursery book called "This little piggy went to market". 

                                               
                                                  

I found that the title of the novel had a sense of irony since it could specify that the pig had been sold to market for food. I then ripped some beige paper and attached it on top of my piglet image. I also painted a specific word like I did in the lamb image to further enhance the meaning of the image I'm trying to show. That word was market because I wanted to specify where the pig's fate was going to end up in. 

In conclusion; this project was quite an adventurous and one of the strangest projects I've done in my past experiences. But I feel I've done a strong job at portraying the message of animal abuse, and the freaky and weird.