Experimental Pieces - Final Major Project

Poster 1:

To start of some of my experimental pieces I took this silhouette image of myself wearing a Batman mask to create the double exposure I am going to have to remove all of the background other than the main body that i want for the end piece.  

To do this i simply opened the image up in Photoshop and then used the quite selection tool and highlighted the areas that I wanted, then went to select, Inverse and then backspace it left me with this. 

The next thing for me to do was start to adding the next layer of images, to do this i simply when to file, place... and selected my image.

Once I placed my image i had to make sure that it fitted all the way over the batman silhouette then in the tool bar section i went over to the drop box and chose the option 'Screen' and it turned out like this. I was not happy with the way this looked because you couldn't see the nice reflection on the face and didn't want to just end up using one image in my final piece. 

From just using the eraser tool i removed all of the part of images that i didn't feel i wanted to keep. i then added the next two images in the same way as the first one, erased all of the parts i didn't want and then pieced it together so they almost look like one image. The last thing that i had to add was the clouds on the main face so that it all ended up looking like one image.

Final Major Project - Brief

For our final assignment we have been given the title 'Final Major Project' when creating work for this project we need to use the specialist skills we have learnt and developed over the two years for our self-proposed project. we will have to propose our own theme / title to investigate and do in-depth exploration into that chosen subject. this will then lead to producing a final outcome which will be exhibited in the BTEC End of Year Show during the week commencing 1st June.

The end of year show is an opportunity to showcase artwork that reflects our own personal style and the best of our abilities; to be able to inspire others. It will be a progressional exhibition, so within this project we will also have to consider presentation methods as this can make a major contribution to the overall effectiveness of the work.

Our self-initated brief also has to show careful planning, by producing a detailed proposal and a week - by - week planner.
There are four key stages to to the FMP project: investigation, planning, creation and evaluation. the body of work we will produce must show our creative journey, innovative thinking and  a personal visual language.

Ellen Jewett, Mr Finch and Anna-Will Highfield

I have choose to look at both of these artists together because they both create multi-disiplinary art pieces. Ellen Jewett creates these almost mythical medium scale sculptures that are made up of polymer clay, acrylic paint, metal, cold poclain and oil. Where as Mr Finch creates fabric and wire sculptures of mostly animals such as butterflies.
The similarities they have are that they both use wire and their main subject is animals. Mr Finch's main body for the piece is the fabric and exposed wire, Ellen Jewett doesnt tend to have the wire exposed.
Another artist that creates animal sculptures is Anna-Will Highfield, her sculptures are made from paper and some are at the same scale as the real animal. Her pieces are similar to mine because of the subject and the fact that they are 3D. I really like these pieces as they have a rough finish to them , from just looking at them at first you wouldn't guess that they are made of paper.

Evaluation of development

When doing the experiment cor my exquisite corpse project, i tried to make sure that i covered all of the areas.

Here i decided to try and make parts of ivy and brambles from fabric and wire.
I really like how it has turned out, this i could use to wrap around my sculptures body and then drap it onto the floor.

The next thing i have decided to do was create some roots/branches to show the main body of the sculpture i have tried creating this through using air dry clay, painted wire hot textiles and fabric.
My favourite ones out of all of them is the air dry clay and the fabric, to me they are the ones that look most like the original source.
The next thing i could try is combining some of the ones i have used seperately to see if i can make something more unique.

Oil Painting

For this workshop we were told that we were going to be making a oil painting on either a board or a canvas.

The first thing i did was to prime my board, I had chosen Brown because the main colour in my animal was brown.

Once I had done that I drew the initial outline of the animal, i had decided on creating a hybrid bird that was mostly bird like but had goat like legs.

The next thing to do was to pain the main body shape in the first colour, when I was mixing my colours they ended up being wrong, and when green but it didn't matter because i could go over it later when I added the next coat.  

I decided that I wanted to work on a piece of board because I haven't painted on one before.

In the image above it shows the first layer of my painting, just under the beak I also added some white now so that when I wanted to blend it later it would be easier.

The next step was to add some of the shading and the main bodies correct colour, once that was correct I was able to add the details, this i had done with a dry brush and a shade darker than the main body and gradually went down the body getting bigger and more faded as I went down.

Once I was happy with the details, I just needed to do a bit more blending and shading this mostly took place at the head of the animal. I made it so the feathered pattern only started after the eye and that the eye was standing out more than it previously did.

Disciplines

Some of the disciplines I could look into is textiles with 3D and textiles and photography.

For textiles I could look into: Felt, Hot textiles, dissolvable fabric, appliqué, machine stitch and hand stitch.

For 3D I could look into: wire, clay, paper mache, plaster, mod roc, casting

Mr Finch

Polly Verity

'The Sharp-Beaked Hound of Zeus' 2009

Creates wire and paper sculptures, this is one of the techniques I am going to experiment with. 
                                             

Shibori

Synthetic fabrics or man-made fabrics are very different in structure to natural fabrics. They absorb dye differently and usually have a different surface quality, have more 'spring' to the touch.

Synthetic fabrics include polyesters, viscose, lycra, acetate, microfibres and rayon.

These fabrics can be used in a versatile medium for textile artists. Fabric can be wrapped around objects and set with heat to distort and manipulate the characteristics of the cloth.





The art of wrapping and tying fabric derives from the japenese technique called Shibori. This method has been used for centuries to create intricate patterns. With the introduction of synthetic fabrics Shibori can be used for sculpting fabrics using heat.