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Anna’s sculpture based off of the description

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The descriptions!

The description I wrote: 

A small object, about six inches tall. Very cute. It is made with clay, and the majority of it is a cool brown that is very light or a grey that’s slightly warm. It has dark speckles all over, and some small green areas. The speckles are a darker grey. The green is not a bright green, and the spots are like little balls that were squished and placed only on the top of the middle section.

               The middle section is about half as wide as it is tall. The top comes out in a thin tendril and expands into a flat almond shape. It is green, with brown lines radiating towards the outside edges. The edges look slightly rough, yet delicate. The tendril is brown, and comes down onto the middle section and branches out. It remains thin, and barely reaches half way down the middle section.  

The middle section is round, almost ball like, with two large holes in it. The holes take up a little over half the height, but are separated by half their width. They have a small lip that goes out and forward of the rest of the area. The holes bow outwards inside, like a little dome. And they are painted black, with small white spots towards the top on the outer edges.

The bottom section matches the top in color and texture, but has no green. It has a crack that goes down from where it meets the middle section through the middle. Is has a few other cracks, one goes up and touches the middle of the object’s right hole in the middle section. The bottom section is thin where it meets the middle, and bows out to double its width which it almost maintains all the way down. Just after where it starts to bow out the area separates into three areas. The middle of the bottom follows the same aesthetic as the area that connects it to the middle. The outer parts of the bottom where it bows out are bean shaped, but the top is blended up into the rest. The base of the bottom section is like a supported by two little tubes that are flat on the bottom. The edge is rounded. They almost look like a square chocolate. It has little cracks that separate the square into the sections at the end. The top of the bottom sections little bean parts also have the same little cracks that separate the bottom into sections.  The middle of the bottom section has a shallow hole with cracks that go up and down. It has wrinkles at the places where the bottom squares meet it and where the beans meet.

Sprout one of a kind rock creature clay sculpture by Laura EAbbot

Her description: 

This sculpture is 3¼ inches tall, 2inches wide, and 1 7/8 inches deep ((deep) per shape). The top of the sculpture is flat, and the total sculpture goes into a diagonal to the base, a square that is 2 inches at all sides and ½ an inch thick. The sculpture sits off center in the base and the tip of the first shape sits inside the base slightly. Deep, but not deep enough to not see the crook         of the inside corner of the initial line. But the total sculpture stays within the base parameters.  

The line coming out of the base has a straight back about 1 ½ inches tall and an inch wide. Half way through the back, two triangles are coming out of the inside edge and outside edge. Only taking ¼ inch in width, height varies between ¼ of an inch to ½ an inch. From the left of the shape to the right, each triangle tip makes the shape 1 ¼ inches wide. This with and measurements will be the same for all the shapes.

In between of the inch-thick lines, there is negative space. Right in the negative space, underneath and in-between the triangles of the joined curved and straight lines, begins another line. This is the second shape, and is curved and attached to the first shapes back. Half way though the curve the same triangles stick out with the same measurements (As above).

Under the triangles, the line curves and ends ¼ of an inch  in between and above of the first shape (1/8 inches). Again, in-between the curved line, there are triangles on the inside and outside of the curved line.

Taking the description of the first paragraph of lines, this time, the lines are attached to the second paragraphs description, but 1/8th inch above the triangles and right before the end of the curve to the upper left-hand corner.

Using the first paragraphs description, at the top of the curve (towards the left) but not quite in the corner, another line is attached. But one that looks like an upside down “v” with a straight line running ¾ of the way of the “v”; above this line is negative space. Bellow it, is more negative space, but the outer corner of the third shape is 1/9th of an inch shy of touching.  At the top of the “v” there is another straight line and is the top of the sculpture. The line starts at what would be the base of the outer right triangle is, but at the top, and goes till the length of the end of the left triangle, increasing in width as it goes. Maximum width being ½ an inch and thinnest being 1/9th of an inch.  The other end of the “v” stops 1/8 of an inch short of the original starting point, and unattached to the left of the third shape. Leaving an 1/8th inch space between the back of the third shape and the end of the current shape.

Height and thickness staying the same throughout all of the shapes, but still in a diagonal line leaning left.

I would show you her sculpture, but she forgot to email it to me after critique

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Self critique + questions from the course

My self critique is, I made a truly dull piece. After a half dozen pieces were made, I should have quit and just given up. I with she didn’t say that it was letters, because it’s impossible to follow her description and make letters. It hardly met any of the description. It was a terrible piece that didn’t have enough time invested into it, which is crazy because I worked on the damn thing daily. 

What skills did you bring to the table from past projects that helped you solve the problems in this one?

I’m guessing I’m supposed to say woodworking, but I feel that I mostly relied on skills I learned while doll making. That taught me more about working in 3D than I learned in this class. I’ve loved working in 3D for years, and it’s amazing how my feelings for it went from adoration to indifference... I don’t even want to touch my dolls. I need a long break from this kind of work.

•  Which was harder: describing, or interpreting?  What do you wish you had done differently?

Interpreting is far harder. I think I did a great job describing, because she recreated it perfectly. I spent hours trying to figure out what the hell I was reading, and I never figured it out. that description was a pile of horse shit. 

•  Were you surprised when you saw the reveal?  How close do you think you got?

I wasn’t surprised at the reveal, I knew it was letters. I was surprised that there was a fourth letter, and that there was NO 1 X 1.5 line in the piece. I wasn’t close. Not even a little. 

•  Was this process fun?  Frustrating?

Describing was fun. I think it had potential to be fun. However I it was a waste of time and the description was beyond horrible.

•  What difficulties did you have with the writing portion of this assignment?  What areas do you think you could work on to improve your comfort with writing?

I’m not a bad writer. I thought it was fun and easy to write about. I have a problem with run on sentences; I could stand to get better with them. 

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A lot of the shapes I made just confused me more, because I was following the directions, but the shapes weren’t anything that could be letters. 

I made a few different versions of it, and just kept guessing. 

In the end I gave up and went with a wood one I made whilst in Wyoming. I felt like an utter failure. I never want to use wood again, just thinking about this makes me want to cry out of frustration.

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I decided to work in card-stock, not so much because I like it as because I wanted to try a technique I’d heard of. I took the card stock and glued to pieces together and cut them to the sizes I needed.

I built the shapes as boxes

I was worried about balance, so I added some extra paper and some hot glue to the base. I figured the base being heavy would help keep it from tipping

Then I continued to guess the shapes by drawing out the measurements.

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3D design final project description

My final project involved writing a detailed description of a sculpture, and giving it to the teacher. She then handed out the descriptions to everyone. There was a hiccup though, because the teacher forgot to hand out the first half of the assignment... It was a rushed description I wrote, but still pretty good. Which I’m glad I was able to finish, because my depression was acting up... The girl who got it recreated it perfectly! My description was really hard. I didn’t understand any of what the description was saying... and my lack of understanding mixed with depression had me questioning the value of my life. It was horrible (don’t worry, I’m getting help. and I’m not suicidal). It didn’t help that my teacher was telling me to just ignore the description, and make whatever, because it felt like she was saying that I am too much of a failure to complete a basic task. I know that she didn’t mean it that way, but it was really hard not to feel that way.

My description involved a lot of measurements, but didn’t say how ANY of them went together. I tried taking all the numbers out of it, but then I was left with nothing. It was practically “there’s a straight line that goes into a curved line and they are off center.” No clues where they touch, no reference to the the size or width of any pieces. It was just arbitrary numbers. 

I got a chance to ask questions, and I wanted basic information. What was it made out of? She mentioned a crook in reference to something else, where is it? Because I thought it was a weird abstract piece, I figured it doesn’t matter too much. Instead the girl just blurts out that it’s letters, which is bullshit. What she described couldn’t be anything in our language. So most of my questions became irrelevant, because I thought maybe it’s a weird house with a funk slide, or a bunch of shapes that are balancing. All of my questions related to what it was, but it being letters negated all my questions. So I wasted my only chance to ask questions. Fun times. All I figured out was that it’s letters, it’s metallic, and it looks like rusty gold. I know that sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t. 

One of the most frustrating parts was the one by one and a half inch lines, which I later found out aren’t even in the piece. In a nutshell, That was my conceptualizing phase of the project. I kept drawing up ideas, but none of them met all the criteria! I was brainstorming until critique day, and I felt so worthless. The teacher went on and on about how I will have clients who give worse descriptions one day, and that a lot of my classmates had worse descriptions. I’m not convinced that she read the description. Also, I make dolls. I work in 3D, this isn’t something new to me. My family and friends in my home town play games where they describe things and I draw them. I can make beautiful things from very little information. So my inability to do this hit really hard, because it’s something I’m good at and I couldn’t do it. I’m glad this class is over. 

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The teacher suggested I start from the bottom and work my way up, so I cut the first leg out. But I messed up and the lines weren’t straight... So, I moved on to the little pieces that would be hard to do when I went out of town.

I worked on her face as a priority, because to me it felt like one of the more important areas in the piece.

For her breast cut the shape and glued them together then used the belt sander and smoothed it out. I did the arms the same way, and the Mikes helped me make a triangle for her waist. The rest was done in Wyoming

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My last assignment was called “Cubist Transformation,” and I had to pick a cubist piece and remake it as a wooden sculpture. The first step was picking a piece, I chose Picasso’s Girl with Mandolin -1910. I chose it because I saw it in my art history class the week before, and it was my favorite piece from the lesson. 

Then I moved on to making a cardboard prototype. I started with the face, because it was the part of the piece that stood out the most to me. Sketched out the areas that seemed most important and worked out from there.

Some of it was layered to help me visualize the different possibilities.I tried to put the pieces together in ways that would make the shadows work along with the original piece, and it took some planning!

Once the front was done came the hard part, maintaining the same aesthetic while creating the back. 

I didn’t feel like I fully achieved what I wanted in the back prototype wise, but  I knew how busy I was going to be, and that I was going to be driving over a hundred miles the next day, so I got it approved like that.

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Questions I forgot to answer for my 50 things assignment

A few additional thoughts on my 50 things projects/parts of the assignment and questions I forgot to add while working on the assignment:

I feel like I did a pretty good job on this piece, the balance of color and weight impressed me. It was harder than expected, despite it coming naturally to me. I kind of wish I added more variety to the straws, some thicker ones, on the surface. As is it feels like I could have achieved a more natural look if I sought out more advice from peers as I worked. I don’t know if I’ll make another fully straw piece, but I might use this to make armatures for my dolls in the future.

I feel like my childhood was an influence in this piece. I grew up raising chickens, and chickens are easy to draw, so I used to draw them for my mom a lot before I found my calling in fairies and dolls. Mom also kept prints of chickens all over the house, the oven mitts had chicken, the hand towels, framed prints, coffee mugs, salt and pepper shakers, the house had a chicken theme for most of my life. I don’t know who the artists’ who’s work I grew up staring at, but the styles were similar to Jo Moulton’s style of chickens.

Straws are made with polypropylene plastic, and the process of making them is confusing to me. The short answer is that a machine melts and shapes the plastic. There are pieces that spin to ensure even coverage, and hollowness, a special piece that sizes the straws, and things to measure, cut, and package each straw. I don’t know if straws have any special meaning, but I have a friend that told me about some southern girls he knew that wouldn’t drink without a straw because it wasn’t ladylike. To me, straws are a hollow material that’s light and perfect for keeping my dolls from using too much material. I see them and think of skeletons.

I went to dollar stores, Walmart, in the end the perfect material was in my box of crafting supplies. I did have to go to Winchell’s for more straws as I worked, but for the most part I just keep straws after I get a drink and I make my family save their straws too. I’ve been collecting straws for years now, so I don’t really have pictures from the hunt.

20+ uses for straws,

1.    jewelry,

2.    doll bones,

3.    a filler when sculpting so you don’t use more expensive materials,

4.    drinking,

5.    making light frames before building something big

6.    covers for Christmas lights to add color

7.    melt the edges and fill with shampoo when traveling

8.    you could cut them and string them up in a doorway, make a little curtain

9.    you can make little Barbie bracelets and use metallic paint.

10. You can glue them into a cute pencil cup

11.   You can put them in your mail holder and separate different kinds of mail

12. Spit ball shooting

13. You could string a lot of clear ones up and use some cotton balls to decorate for a winter play, make icicles

14. You could put fake blood in a bigger straw, melt the edges to keep it from leaking, and bite in to it for special affects in a haunted house. Just bite it!

15.  You could use them to make fake wires for a robot

16.  You could cut a spiral down it and glue it to decorate your pens so no one swipes them

17.  You could cut a piece to put over the end of your paint brush for safe travels

18.  You could tie some small pieces of straw together with yarn to make a fun slightly noisy cat toy, my cat loves louder toys.

19.  With some pipe cleaners and cotton balls they could make part of a great spider

20.  a thinner straw could be used for candy making, like those chocolate lollipops

21. You could use them to weave a little basket

22.  You could make a fake hula skirt out of them

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At least 50 things part 2:

Since I finished so quickly I figured I would make another sea horse, but use straws instead of bells. I just hot glued a bunch of straws together and let it slowly form something. after I finished the head I didn’t feel like it was a sea horse, it felt like a chicken. Not what I was going for, but I thought it would be fun to roll with it, after all I already have my sea horse. If I don’t like it no big deal. so I used bigger straws to make a base to build off of. I cut my smaller straws and continued to add them wherever they were needed. In some places I added extra hot glue to add some weight so it would balance better. 

To get the tail and some of the other “feathers” to curl, I wrapped the straw around my fingers and pulled it away. Kind of like if you were curling a ribbon. I actually had to cut off his feet because they wouldn’t balance. I made his new feet with wire and put the straws on it.this way he could stand on his own!! This piece was almost entirely trial and error. I just tried to make sure his feathers went in the right direction and kept adding layers where needed until it looked like a rooster my family had when I was little named Fluffy. 

It took a lot to make him and get him to stand, I had to leave several times to let myself think and process better ways to make him. In the end the time I put into him made him a lot more special than the sea horse. The challenge he presented me with was perfect, and I ended up really proud of this little guy. He was my finished 50 something. 

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At least 50 things:

I started by making a flat shape that resembled a sea horse and using super glued them together. then I added some larger bells to the sides of his head and torso. then I used my smaller bells to make the shapes a bit less jagged and more sea horse like. I continued to add on to the head torso and neck until I was happy. Finally, I beefed up his tail, and gave him a fin. He was completed, but I finished quite a bit before the deadline, so I continued to work. 

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Thumbnails part 2:

I thought of an octopus, a hand, then I started to get silly. I thought it would be fun to do bell bottoms or musical chairs, a little net that would be hang from the ceiling, or a little bell doll. But I was still sold on the sea horse.

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Thumbnails part 1. 

Instead of drawing thumbnails I did a little free writing and arranged the bells to look like the ideas I liked best. There’s a cat, elephant, squirrel, sea horse, my dog, and a spider. Of these I liked the sea horse best, and I knew I wanted to make it. I had to make more thumbnails though, because the teacher wanted me to explore at least ten ideas.

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The first project for my 3D design class was called “at least 50 thing,” and the material that first caught my eye was bells. It was a strange material to sculpt with, but I thought it would be fun!