Skull-pture 2

In the end I think that I had made about 18 plaster cast of the cow's vertabrae. I began to think of ideas of how to use the casts to make a sculpture. I didn't want to add anything to the casts because I thought that they looked very beautiful and interesting on their own and that the addition of another material or media would take away from their effect. When looking for inspiraton for this piece I turned to the artist Daphne Wright. I really like her work. She uses casting to create eerie, poignant sculptures of animals such as horses, swans and lambs. I love the feel of her work. The stillness of the  animals really makes an impact on me. These are creatures that should be moving yet they are not, they are still and cold and solitary.

 

For my own sculpture, I wanted the casts to be all linked together, just as all the vertabrae of the spine are linked together. when constructing the sculpture, I first made a wire frame. I then started placing the vertabrae on to the frame. I used bostik and white thread in order to do this. I stuck the vertabrae on in a random way, to create a slight distortion in the piece. I really like how this work turned out. I feel that it represents the spine well. Although it was a time comsuming work to make and involved a lot of different processes, I think that it was well worth it! 

Studies of the twig sculpture

After making the the twig sculpture, I thought that it would be really interesting to use it as a source for creative process. I began to draw the twigs using pencil. I decided to focus in on a section where the twigs crossed over each other and to do this I used a view finder. In order to capture the texture of the twigs I drew using the side of the pencil.

 

I had previously studied the twigs by sticking arrangements of them into my sketchbook and looking at the  way the twigs sat against one another. I then began to tie sets of two twigs together with thread. I like the way that the white of the thread worked with the natural browns and greys of the twigs.

                        

After making the sculpture I began to look atb it and one of the things that interested me most about it was the negative space inbetween the twigs. I made a drawing of this negative space and then experimented with ways of developing it! With the original drawing I cut out the negative space. I then took rubbing of this and experimented with different kinds of paper and media

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Skull-pture

After being inspired by the spine, I had an idea for a sculpture using the finger knitting that I had done during the month of November. I got some bamboo, then hammered it so that it would split in half and then had a frame made by the technitions. I filled the frame with clay and smoothed out the surface of the clay. I tied 2 pieces of bamboo together using string. I did this in order to get the bamboo to bend in the shape of the spine. I then stuck 3 pieces of the bamboo into the frame and bent them into a type of curve, the inspiration for which came from the shape of the spine. To get the shape to hold I had to tie the tops of the bamboo together using fishing line. I then began to wrap the raffia finger knitting around the 3 poles. I wrapped it in such a way so as to recreate the bumps of the vertabrae. I eally enjoyed making this piece! It was great fun and I'm also pleased with the result!

 

Sticks and Stones . . .

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I started to think about the similarites between twigs and branches and bones, I wanted to begin to use them as a media. Both twigs and bones are natural substances, something which I have been kee to explore through out my project. both of these object provide structure to other things also, ie. the bones give structure to the body and the twigs give structure to the tree. So.... I dragged my sister outside to help me to collect some twigs around our local countryside. The twigs that I got were ash wood, which is very flexible.

I then tied the twigs in a "V" shape, trying to tie two twigs of similar size together. I seccured them with thread, cream in colour. I really like the effect of the cream on the brown wood.



 I wanted the piece that I would make to to take inspiration from the spine. I looked at how the vertabrae locked into one another in a "V" shape and decided to slot the ash "V"s that I had made into one another. This created, in my opinion, a very interesting pattern and shape. I really like how the ends of the branches naturally stick out, recreating that pointed element of the spine also.

Painting with the Skeleton

I started looking at the skeleton as a tool to use for painting. I began to think about the way the actual arm of the skeleton can push and drag paint around the page. I wanted to do a painting which could capture this. I got 4 A1 size sheets and then I taped them together. I then took inspiration for the colours of the piece from my cow's vertabrae. I mixed ochers, ultramarine blue and browns with white in order to replicate the colours that I saw. I then watered the paint down so that it would be easy for my skeleton to spread it accross the page. the purpose of this painting is to get a visual representation of the movement of the skeleton.

Working with the Casts

After making more of the wax casts of the vertebrae, I decided to string them together in order to examine the movement of the spine. I really liked the idea of stringing the wax pieces together. I wanted to arrange them in the "S" shape of the spine. I needed to get some strong wire in order to do this. . .so . . . I bought some wire at the garden centre and but it had a plastic coating on it which I had to remove with knife. At first I wanted to  push the wire through the wax casts but this did not work as the wax started to break when I did this. Then after some thought I wrapped the wire around the casts. I wrapped wire around aprox 9 casts, then hung them between two pieces of bamboo in the studio. I wanted to recreate the "S" of the spine, as I said, however the casts were too heavy, which led to a dip in the piece. I'll have to get thinking so I can find a way of making the wire stronger without obstructing the simplicity of the work!  

  

Back Breaking Drawings of the Back Bone

After examing the spine and the vertabrae, I decided that I wanted to do a series of charcol drawings of them. I felt that it would be a good experience to do these drawings on a large scale. I wanted to use paper that was off white, as I felt that white would be too stark. I got a large strip of brown paper, the kind used for wrapping parcels, from the materials store. The paper measures (at a guess!) aprox. 5foot in lenth and aprox 2foot in width.

Drawing 1

The 4 drawings, are to be viewed as a series, each one is a development of the last. I began the first drawing by trying to capture the bear shape of the spine. With the next drawing I tried to develop this further by adding in a few more details. And so on went the process untill drawing 4, the drawing which is fully developed. I used only charcol and my fingers to shape the drawings. I rubbed the charcol on to the page then removed the areas of highlight with my hands. I wanted a blurry, unclear quality to result from these pieces. In all these pieces took about 2 weeks to compleate, so they were quite time consuming!

Drawing 3

Drawing 4

Drawing 2

 I really enjoyed doing these drawings, I found it really exciting to be working on such a large scale.