Here are some pieces that I did in charcoal and graphite. The tree, owl, and tortoise are charcoal and the portrait of my daughter Anna is in graphite.

 My next project was to do anything I want as long as it is in color, the surface area is equal to or greater than 108 inches, and it shows contrast. This is what I came up with. This was a blast to do! This is the first time I have done a piece in color so I went with pastels and a little colored pencil. I have done some charcoal work in the past so pastels seemed to be the smart choice. Let me know what you think, good or bad. Thanks for looking!

Here is a better pic of my sculpture

I am finally done! This project turned out way better than I originally imagined it! I changed the composition a little at the last minute. Having liquid dripping off a leaf on to a orb proved to be a pain so instead I made the plants sprout a planet. I think the change worked out nicely.

Here are a couple progress pics of my final project.This is definitely looking way better than I thought.

Next up is the final project! I am going to construct a clay sculpture that represents the beginning of life. I plan on making a sweet looking trunk topped with a lotus flower. One of the leaves growing from the trunk will be dripping onto a sphere. The sphere will look like its liquid with ripples around it to show it was just dripped on. The plant represents pure nature.The trunk will be overgrown with vines and mushrooms. I'm thinking about making each leave different with pine needles at each leaves base, to give a look that represents several different types of life. The lotus flower on the top represents purity. The water it is dripping on the sphere represents the seed of life and the sphere represents a world. I am super excited about this piece.

For this project I tried to represent the essence of the word defence in a abstract piece that I carved out of a piece of plaster. I started chipping away at it with a basic idea of the overall shape but I hadn't worked out much of the detail. As I got further into this piece I realized I should have thought this one through a lot more. It just never seemed to come together for me. I just wasn't feeling this piece. The overall idea was to depict an entity shooting a force field to project its self from whatever.

Well unfortunately the hand I made from clay broke into three pieces while being fired. I have epoxied them together and am currently fixing any chipping along the crack lines with epoxy putty. Since I fixed it with epoxy I can’t glaze it so paint it is. I'm definitely disappointed it broke but super glad it is fixable. I will post some pics after it’s painted.

Next on the agenda I am going to carve a sculpture out of a chunk of plaster. I decided to try and represent the essence of defense in this abstract sculpture. This is definitely new territory for me. I am excited to see how this turns out. 

 

Well the hand project didn't go quite as planned. Shortly after I started arraigning the hands the project took a turn and I changed the concept of the piece. I decided to symbolize how together people can accomplish much more than a single person in the eternal quest for knowledge.

For the next project I need to make a 3d piece of art using multiples of a cast object. I am going to make a little hand that is about 3 inches long, cast a bunch of them then arrange them on a ball in a way that symbolizes humans taking over the world. The hands will originate from the top of the sphere and spread like a disease. After the piece hardens up a bit I am going to remove the ball leaving just the hands. This piece is going to be awesome! I can't wait to get started.

I'm almost finished with the clay hand! So far i am happy with this piece. I still need to go over it one last time, but I think it's done for the most part. I really liked this project and can't wait to cook this bad boy. I think I might pick up some dark red glaze for the finish.

The next project on my plate is to make a clay hand modeled after my own. This sculpture needs to be as realistic as possible and I need to put some thought in the position of the hand. For the positioning of the hand I'm thinking about trying to place the fingers in a similar position to the way a spider stands when threatened. Mimicking the way a spider holds its front two limbs up to tell you to back off or they are going to kick some ass. I pumped out a quick sketch to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about. This is going to be a sweet paper weight.

The functional ceramics project was fun. It was more challenging than I thought it was going to be. The eye cup in my last post ended up not happening. I was making the cup using the coil method and it proved to be a lot flimsier than I thought so I pinched one side together to make a handle and called it good. I made a cylinder shaped pencil holder using the slab technique, it proved to be muck sturdier then my cup so I slapped the eye on the side of it. The eye turned out nothing like I originally envisioned it but it was fun messing around with some different texture ideas. The last piece I made was a leaf shaped incense burner. Using the pinch pot method, I started playing around with some clay and at one point thought "this looks like a leaf" and that's how the leaf incense burner was born. I would post some pics but I sent the pieces of to the burner before I took pics.

My next assignment is to make three functional objects out of ceramic. Also to make a model using the program Sketchup. Here is the model I came up with for my eyeball cup. For the eye cup I am going to use the coil technique. For the other two pieces I am thinking of doing a candle holder and a incense burner. I am going to use the slab technique for the candle holder and the pinch pot technique for the incense burner.

        Creating the snake proved to be a much greater challenge then I anticipated. The first couple attempts went horribly wrong. I ended up using a toy light saber to coil the wire around. This worked very well because the light saber tapered from base to point which allowed me to adjust the size of the body of the snake. To create the head I coiled the wire around a toy dinosaurs head. Next came the task of the markings. Using a thin tin wire that was very easy to manipulate, I weaved diamond shape markings down the back of the snake. To wrap up the project I used copper wire to give it eyes, mouth, and a tongue. Over all I had a great time creating this piece and I am happy with the way it turned out. 

       

My first project for 3-D studio is to create a wire sculpture. I looked around the house for something to create but just wasn't getting any vibes so I made a sketch. I came up with a snake coiled around a tree stump. I used rebar to make the base shape of the stump then rapped it in bare copper speaker wire. I plan on making the body of the snake out of black rebar tie wire then creating the markings along its back with both tin and copper wire.

Hello! This blog is for my 3-D studio class at MCC. This post is just me getting familiar with it.