Sculpture – mushrooms

Sculpture – mushrooms

Sculpture

I manged to bring clay back to be able to make the mushrooms, i started by looking at some reference photos and shaped them. I am so happy with how they turned out.

Making the first one I found a hard as I needed to find a controlled and logical way of making them, once I had made the first mushroom I found my way I liked to do them. This meant that I started to make them faster and tried different styles.

I started getting a lump of clay to make the cap (the top of the mushroom). From this I would then use slip to add in the stem. Once the stem was on I would add the gills (lines under the cap). Then I would add the skirt (little bit coming off the stem.

I used a craft knife and scalpel to make form and markings.

painting the mushrooms…..

I dried the mushrooms on my radiator at my accommodation, I did end up braking one but it was very thin anyway so probably wouldn’t have worked. The ones that did work I manged to paint and I am so happy with how they look.

I painted these by starting painting them white to get a good base colour. Then I went in to the stem with a grey to give it a more natural look and some of them with brown and also black.

Then I started to paint the gills I used white and then I when in with grey and black to show the lighting would be above them. This was just to make the look even better than just having it white.

To finish the look, i went in with white on the cap and then started to add a light brown all over but not tasking care at the very edges as some apart can be white. when the lighter brown was on, I then went in with a slightly darker brown in the middle to give it a better look. As nature is not perfect I then also added random white and black marks to the cap.

This was the main basses of how I made all the mushrooms, I am so happy with them and think they look so realistic. I might be making more but not sure yet.

The Final Look…..

Painting – Alyssa Monks

Painting – Alyssa Monks

Painting (looking into realism and positioning (linking to book of the dead in Egypt))

Alyssa monks is am American painter who does very realist paintings normally of humans. her amazingly real artwork catches the eye to be a photograph. When painting the person she loves to use water and steam within the painting image. This has lead to a lot of her art being people bathing or in baths and showers.

these are some of her works. I really like these are the colours she uses are not too bright and are very natural. One thin that Alyssa monks aims for is the idea of you being able to put yourself in the persons position. I don’t think I can relate to the second and third image, but I do find it hard to look at the first image as the water being in his eyes makes me feel weird as I know I hate that feeling. so I cant look at the image in a combatable way.

I want to use the idea of realism painting within both my abstract and a new idea I have had. i want to have a painting of both a water lily skull and person on my abstract paintings I want to see how each one looks and works with the abstract so I’m going to do a lot of abstract backgrounds.

I also want to do a more refined piece where I want to do the idea of generations a lot more and have a realistic paintings of different generations. I do also want to some how involve a water lilly into thiese as well.

Both of these ideas need to have a lot more work put towards them as they are not ready so I want to focus on experimenting with these a lot more. So from here I am going to so two post on me developing both ideas and what I want to get out of them.

Drawing – Toned paper

Drawing – Toned paper

Drawing

I prepped some paper by using tea at first, but I remembered that coffee works a lot better. so I used hot water and coffee to get a tone on the paper adding a lot of the mixture to where I wanted the tone to be darker. I made about 4 pages of this so I decided to make each one a little different.

  • The first page I just used coffee and water
  • The second I used coffee and water and then i added salt as that sucks up the liquid leaving little circles and marks on the paper.
  • The third I use coffee and water mix and then i added some dry coffee. this would dissolve a little bit into the water but make very dark patches that you can draw on giving it a really nice effect.
  • The forth I used the coffee and water mix, I also use salt and dry coffee to see how it would all reacted together.

I didn’t use all of these to draw on though. I used two.

First we did some drawing as a quick starter and i did this on normal paper.

My First Quick Drawing…..

This was my first quick drawing. I decided to use blue because I always use black, greys or whites. I did this to get my out of my comfort zone. This meant I had to figure out how to use the blues for shading and highlighting. This first one I did find hard as this was my first attempt.

So I decided form this I wanted to start with a lighter blue for a base and then slowly go in with the shadowing.

My Second Quick Drawing…..

This was my second one and I haven’t done that much but I did feel a lot more confident doing it. I feel the eyes do work a lot better when working with the highlights and then adding in the shadows.

The next thing I was going to do was paint onto the toned paper, so I decided to stick with blue to see if i could developed it more.

My First Tone Paper (Also Drawing)…..

This was my first tone drawing. I really like the detail or doing each but of the hair not just a dark tone. I think one of my favourite things about this is how I put down a light colour for the hoodie and then rubbed it out to show its was white and very light. I do like how I have positioned it on the paper too.

I wanted to do a bigger drawing next so I tired to use a lot more of the paper.

Second Tone Paper…..

This was the paper that i use the mix of coffee and water on, then I put salt on it. You can see the little white specs on the paper where the salt has taken away the coffee and water.

I remembered this worked from secondary school, so I wanted to see if it would look good with a drawing. I didn’t get to draw on this one though, but I might do it in my own time.

Third Tone Paper…..

For this toned paper I added the water and coffee mix but then also sprinkled dried coffee on to the paper. I love the effect this had on the drawing and how it shows through it. This is probably one of my favourite drawing I have done and I really wan to take it further in my work.

I also really like how I did the top of the hair but I would change. I am not sure how I could do this so I think I going to try different ways in my sketch book.

Forth Tone Paper…..

This paper didn’t turn out how I wanted it to but I still kind of like it. On this paper it had the mix of coffee and water, salt and dried coffee. I didn’t put enough coffee on the paper and I put way to much salt.

I defiantly think I am going to look more into this type of paper. Also want to look into doing a life drawing on to the paper and using the coffee to positions it.