My final work, according to many people, looks like a duck. But this shape wasn’t intentional. I have a ball-shaped figure at the front, and two sharp shapes at the back, which pretty much looks like wings. The bottom is on a curve, with a foot-like shape that supports the figure to stand on its own. If I have chance later, I want to make other shapes using plaster and foam. For example, I want to make a few of the same shapes, with different sizes. If I put them together, different sizes would add variety to my piece.
At first, we used ink pens to doodle on a thick white page. Then we randomly put mixtures of water colors and dried it for few days. We could make stains by adding salt. Later, some spaces formed by various lines were colored in. After randomly choosing one of the space we filled in, we used the clay to make 3D form of the shape. We used this form to make a bigger version with the foam. After carving and grinding the form to make the surface smooth, the plaster cloth was wrapped around the whole figure. When it was fully dried, we added some thicker cloth to make some parts stick out. For example, I added layers of thick cloth on the mouth to make it pointy. Then, the figure was once again carved and grinded to make the surface smooth. To make it completely smooth and even on the surface, I used brush to gently tap around the form. Before coloring the form, I drew some sketches on my sketchbook. I came up with three sketches, and I chose this design because I like how some parts stand out and the rest are clean-white. To add variety to the simple form, rainbow colors were painted on the form. Below are some pictures of my final work.
Some principles of design I have used are repetition and emphasis. Throughout the figure I have repeated the rainbow “dart” shapes. To clearly show repetition, I have mixed the same proportion of colors in each color. Also, since my background is white, all of the rainbow dart figures are naturally emphasized. This assignment took longer than others because we had to put a lot of effort on one of the elements of art, texture. For many of the classes I spent time grinding and smoothing the surface. Another element of art used was shape or form. As you can see in the picture, the front part of my work is round, like a duck’s head. But if you have a look at the back side, the wing-like figures are sharp and pointy. I have attached extra cloth plaster to make several edges. As mentioned before, I have used variety of colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple etc.
