Something New

Tuesday, March 22nd

     In the past, I have been using mainly acrylic paints and doing faces of people. I saw this as a trend and felt the need to switch things up a bit. However, in my actual art class we were assigned to do ANOTHER portrait. I know it's getting monotonous, but I was really pleased on how it turned out so I'll show you a picture. I tried to incorporate a unique color scheme for a little more variation. Here it is:)

     Despite my success in my comfort zone with acrylics, I decided to make something in three dimension rather than 2D. While trying to decide what to make, I looked at the shelf in my room which is home to three of my favorite little succulents. Looking at the cacti made me think : "What if I could make those look even more artsy?"

     Making a pot would kill 2 birds with one stone. I could make my room look nicer with a small, homemade accent piece and I could get more experience with clay. 

     

     The pot I began to make this week is not something that is thrown on the wheel. It is more of a rectangular box. I started out by cutting each side, but had to start over and make a template after the edges were uneven. This was a roadblock as well as the fact that the pieces became leather-hard after not working with them for a week. Leather-hard is term used to describe clay when it is dried out to the point of having only about 15% moisture. It is able to be reconstituted in water, but isn't as easy to cut. I know, I know, boring....but that's why I decided to start over.

     

     After re-rolling and re-cutting each side, I beveled the edges and stuck the pieces together. This is done by scoring the clay (making scratches in the surface) and using slip (VERY wet clay) as glue. 

     Here's the box I'm in the process of finishing with the edges scored (far right):

     After this, you reinforce the inside edges with a coil of clay. This was hard because my fingers were too fat to fit in the box without messing up the sides. :-(

      Coil reinforcement before blending:

     To make it more intriguing, I am putting little embellishments on the side:

The box isn't done yet, but it will hopefully be fired and glazed by the time of my next post!

Frondescence

Wednesday, March 2nd
   
      This week I took some time that we had off of school to work on a self portrait with a little spin. This piece is titled "Frondescense" which is a French word describing foliage, or the time when a tree creates leaves and a flower blooms.
     I spent the whole day painting this which was at times tiring, but I didn't have anything else to do. I started off painting the base under my face with a peachy-pink color, then added the flowers on top. When I paint, I tend to not have a plan. This being said, I just sat there in my room thinking of flowers that would look interesting and then added them in different areas as the ideas bloomed (haha).
     My favorite part of this piece is the nose; I was avoiding it until the very end because I wasn't quite sure how to make it look decent. In this case, procrastination worked in my favor! (: The little rose bud paired with the hair as roots tied it all together.
     Another area of confusion I had was the hair. At first, I finished the painting and it was just a bald, floating head. After working on this for about 3 hours straight, I took a little break and when I came back, I realized that the floating head was actually super weird. I turned to my group of close friends and Caleb had the idea of making the roots as hair so creds to him.