Space: Playing with scale

Today we were looking at space, how people occupy space, and how artists create the feeling of space, or lack of it, in their work. My favourite piece I looked at was by Joel Shapiro, and it was a cast iron chair, all alone in a large room. It started me thinking about scale, and how people perceive it. A chair is something that is supposed to be a certain size, supposed to be big enough for a person to sit on, so this very small chair, that would fit in your hand, is very strange to look at, and might make people viewing it feel uneasy and confused about what to do. I wanted to use this idea of making something that is usually big, very small. I thought of different ways of doing this and I liked the idea of making whatever I decided to make out of a different material to what it usually is (Shapiro's chair is made of cast iron) after brainstorming as a group, I decided to make a cityscape, scaled down very small, and I decided to do this out of paper.

I decorated the buildings with fineliner pen to give them windows, and I liked the contrast this had with the bright white paper. I think the black and white buildings worked well on brightly coloured background as this added to the feeling that this shouldn't be there. I tried to find locations that were easily identifiable in terms of scale, to show how small the buildings are.

I arranged the pine cones to show the scale of the buildings, but also so the buildings were tucked away, in a corner, so people passing by wouldn't notice they were there.

I really like this photo because a wasp came and landed on it, but unfortunately, it's a little bit blurred because i moved slightly, but the wasp flew away so i couldn't retake the photo

These photos also have the wasp in, but not as visible as the first one.

This photo is very clear but unfortunately the wasp is not in it.

I then put it on a leaf I found, as I like all the colours of the leaf, contrasting with the stark monochrome of the buildings.

I will take more photos of the buildings in different locations in the next few days to see which background I think looks best.

Fashion: 3D modelling

 In fashion, we were looking at shape, rather than trying to make a garment that fits to the body. To create the shapes, I used a pattern piece for a sleeve, and drew around it, then overlapped the same shape over the top, and kept slitting the piece and pulling it out, to create interesting patterns and shapes. I used the photocopier to make some of the shapes bigger, to make them have more visual impact when I pinned them on the mannequin. I think some of the best designs came from when I experimented pinning the shapes in places that weren't obvious, so not to make a garment, but put them in more unexpected places. I found this gave more interesting results.

Fine Art

 This is the first piece I made, using a variety of methods to get my objects onto the paper. I used a projector to change the scale of my objects, like the pink scissors and the washer and bolt, and drew around them as well, to portray the same objects in different ways. I used poster paint, pencil crayon and pastel to get different textures and effects, but only used four colours, pink, purple, blue and green.

 I like this one because it is more direct, I used objects to apply the paint to the paper, such as a fork, a yoghurt pot, a piece of string, and then because my hands were covered in pink paint from the string, I made hand prints  instead of just drawing around them like I did  previously.

This one is one of my favourites, because I like the contrast between the very precise, almost photographic nature of the background with the random, messy blue on top. I found that dropping the paint-covered string, rather than laying it down, made better patterns and wiggles. I also like the simple blue and brown colour-scheme, because I think the brown makes the blue look bluer.

I like the contrast between the pink and green on this one, and the simplicity of the design. I added the blue right at the end, because without it, the colours felt too unbalanced because there was no mid tone in between the bright pink and the dark green.

I used rolled up paper and a projector to make the green spirals. I liked the green and brown together, and they looked very natural together, so I decided to add the blue as a contrast and focal point. I used the same method of dropping the string I used earlier, so the random patterns contrasted with the repetition of the background.

More paper models.

One of the reasons I chose my object in the first place was because I found it interesting that the middle part (the green bit) spins, so I decided to make a model to try to capture that. I wanted to show the roundness and movement, so I used scoring and folding to make a shape that I thought conveyed this. I started with  a quarter of a circle, and scored curved lines on both sides then folded it. to get it to spin, I wrapped the end around a metal pole, and threaded it through a slit in the other side so it was secure, but could still move around the pole. I made more of the same shape and put them in size order on the pole, with some going opposite ways.

I think the photo looks as if it is a snapshot taken when it was spinning because of the way the pieces curve. I also like how it looks very organic from the top.

  I made another to go with it, using the same method, but with semicircles instead of quarters. This meant there were no straight edges like on the first one. I liked how this captured the shape of the object better, but it didn't seem to me to have as much of a sense of movement as the first one. I think this might be because the pieces are thinner so they don't overlap as much.

   Once I had made these, I thought that they would make good lamps if a small light was placed under each of the paper petals, or they could be sculptures, put at either side of a doorway.

3D paper models

We used the same objects for our paper models that we used for our ink drawings. The aim was not to make a model of the object itself, but one inspired by it. One of my favourite parts of the object was the little screws on each end, so I decided to try to make a model which incorporated that spiral.  I decided the base of it would be a cylinder, and I wanted the screw thread to come out from the cylinder all the way round. To make it one continuous spiral, I drew diagonal lines on my paper, so that the end of one line was level horizontally with the start of the next. I then cut slits and folded the paper so the lines stuck out, Similar to making a paper lantern. When I curled the paper into a cylinder and secured it with masking tape, the spiral looked like one continuous line.

I then started thinking about fastening it without using anything other than the paper itself. I thought the best way to do this would be little tabs one one side and slits on the other. I folded the tabs back on themselves inside the cylinder so they wouldn't slip back through.

  I realise my explanation may not have made sense to everyone, so I have made a colour-coded diagram of where each diagonal line on my flat piece of paper goes when it is made into a cylinder.

The end of the red line meets the start of the yellow line, the end of the yellow line meets the start of the green line, etc. Hope that makes sense!