Degree show material experiments

Hello!!

The time has come! Fourth year has commenced and I have ALREADY just finished my fourth  week ! I spent the entire summer trying to develop my ideas and decide upon what it was I wanted to create for my degree show. Once my final year began, safe to say I felt overwhelmed and not ready! The first and second weeks I felt rather lost and found it really very difficult to commit to an idea. I knew I wanted to create a room installation but the fact I do not have the space I would be working in yet was really holding me back. 

Week three hit and I had a very positive meeting with my tutor, in which she encourage me to go down to the sculpture studios and just start experimenting. After doing this, I feel like my ideas and inspirations all just fell into place. The process of actually creating something helped me relax and settle upon an idea. Being able to physically build with the materials helped me envisage what my installation would look like. So now I have a vision... and it's time to start work making it a reality.  

I used chicken wire and molded it into 'blobular' like shapes, I then filled the shapes I had made with expanding foam to achieve this very organic shape you see below 

The expanding foam dried and kept the shape really very well, however it's colour was left with a slight green tint. As I would be looking to achieve a very vibrant colour when painting it, I needed to experiment with priming to give me a white base. 

With mod roc

Here you see (above) I tried covering the expanding foam in mod roc, This however left me with to much of a texture, I then tried sanding that down but I didn't like the results that it gave me. 

I ended up priming the sculpture with white acrylic paint (see below)

With mod roc and white acrylic primers 

I then tested out how vibrant a colour pay off I would get with a singular coat of white paint to prime. 

I done this by testing orange and purple, this was very successful and I was happy to see the colours dried opaque and bright. 

colour test

I also experimented with using the mod roc straight onto the shape I'd molded from the wire, however although this gave a very opaque white colour and a strong base to paint upon, I again did not like the texture. 

Here you see a more detailed study of the colour vibrancy. I am very happy with how bright they are showing up. 

Half painted on acrylic half mod roc 

 I am going to be using mannequins throughout my installation, so I needed to also experiment with how paint would take to the form. I went down to my sculpture studios and asked around however there seemed to be a bit of a shortage in the uni. I was given this, but I was told I will need to return the mannequin at the end of the year. So I am going to use it as a tester piece but source my own mannequins, and solely use my own to paint and have in my degree show. 

I am feeling really very excited I can't wait to now get my own mannequin and start to transform her, I also plan on incorporating other found objects too. 

As always keep an eye out for more blog posts! 

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Alexzandria