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inspiration- miniatures

http://www.marikaaakala.com/

http://www.daniellacallow.co.uk/

#model making

Links to blog subsections

http://techartssomerscales.tumblr.com/tagged/head

http://techartssomerscales.tumblr.com/tagged/torso

http://techartssomerscales.tumblr.com/tagged/reflective_journal

http://techartssomerscales.tumblr.com/tagged/designandmake

#designandmake

300 words on my piece

For the Design & Make unit I wanted to create a miniature, using the context of a scale stage piece for a play. The theme of the unit being ‘Surrealism’, I reached my conclusion by thinking about the surrealism of inconsistent scale in a piece - the components of the piece have different scales including 1:50 and 1:125, to create different uses of space as the stage piece rotates for different scenes creating altered perspectives.

My story concept stems from ‘Mortal Engines’ and ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’; surreal stories in which there are clusters of buildings which roam the land. My piece is a combination of different fantasy styled buildings, with aspects like the pirate ship front where the inhabitants would control the movement, a turret for observation, and a water mill to generate energy if the building were to stop by a flowing river.

The piece is situated on a turning platform representing the stage, showing how the actors would use the space, able to interact with some of the pieces which would be to actual size, and how they would use other sides of the piece as backgrounds to give an exaggerated or surreal sense of scale.

#designandmake

A last minute addition was this turret. I had been considering it, but hadn’t really had time, so this piece isn’t finished unfortunately. I will add it for now as i feel it’s important for the balance of the piece, and will finish it off after the project ends as it has the potential to look really interesting. This would be used as a sort of watchtower or vantage point on the moving buildings.

#designandmake

The addition of a water mill would be a nice touch in the sense of purposes of the building. To give the context, it would be used to generate power or grind flour for example, when the building came to rest by a river in this story. This then leads to the logic that the building would roam around always looking for a river to support the life of those inside, as people have always done when making settlements. I feel it’s a nice touch that gives some practical depth.

I’m very pleased with the roof tiles on this, and would use this method again as I think it’s very effective. I painted the building to suggest some water damage around the wheel area as a story-lead detail.

#designandmake

As my concept comes from Howl’s Moving Castle in part, I looked into Ghibli movies and the style of buildings in those. One that stood out to me was a scale model I found of the hotel in Spirited Away, and thought some tiny buildings like those would look interesting on the side, as they cluster well and look very busy and cute.These buildings might be for living in or sleeping in as they have that feel to them, and are in 1:125 scale to match the central piece for perspective.

#designandmake

A style I wanted to incorporate was Art Nouveau, as I find it fascinating and feel it would have a good impact as a decorative part of the piece.

The idea for this piece is that it will sit slightly away from the main building, and would be to the actors’ scale so they could use it as an entrance and exit point, suggesting its purpose as access into the cluster of buildings, while making more dynamic use of the stage space. I will also add some details to this piece when the whole is more finished to make it a more interesting free-standing part, possibly with a sense of being partly built/ broken to suggest its removal from the main body of the building is for the purpose of stage layout.

#designandmake

This small building off the side looks a bit like a garage or little store of some kind. I learned and used a lot of surface work techniques in making this small piece, and am especially happy with how i used tiny shavings of bolsa to look like exposed plywood structure, and the scored stencil card door shutter.

#designandmake

The central building of this stage piece had to be large and sturdy, with the smaller parts to be added later. It would be in here that the engines and mechanisms would be, and things like storage, so it has to be strong and big. Visually, it makes sense to have it as the largest, and I chose to use a scale of 1:125 on my ruler as a base for this part, so that sides where much of it was visible, the actors would be standing away from the piece, distorting perspective and playing on the surreal theme.

I used inspiration of Victorian factories and referenced buildings in my derelict london book for help in designing it.

#designandmake

The fist piece I worked on is the front, a pirate ship style cabin where the ‘driver’ or ‘captain’ of the building would live and observe from.

I chose the ship style front as I wanted to give this feeling of it being captained by some sort of adventurer, and to give some fun fantasy look to the piece.

I found some thread which looked like tiny scale rope, so I used it to add detail to the roof and enhance the ‘ship’ feel of it.

#designandmake

LINKS to blog subsections

http://techartssomerscales.tumblr.com/tagged/head/chrono

http://techartssomerscales.tumblr.com/tagged/torso/chrono

http://techartssomerscales.tumblr.com/tagged/reflective_journal/chrono

Reflective Journal - Artist research / inspiration

On Christophe Charbonel’s website :

"Christophe is a sculptor. He sculpts, or rather model human figures.They are earth, plaster, bronze. They are small and fit in the hand, or large and we exceed high. They are heads, torsos, partial, whole body, deployed collected. They are beautiful and proud. They are like us and have something more, they transcend, they are beyond our nature, they say our body but also our soul. "

I collected some inspiring images on Pinterest while developing an idea of how to finish my torso (and head when it is done). I do like the look of the green bronzes I’ve come across and really want to have a go at recreating this effect on the plaster.

#reflective journal

This is the final torso painting process.

To stat with I covered the whole thing in green shellac varnish, but I noticed after it had dried that it was to shiny and dark for my liking, which means that there should have been more meths in the solution. This was problematic, and I had to spend ages removing/pulling back this green layer, and working into it to make it like what I had in mind.I tried dripping some meths to remove certain areas in a more ‘natural’ patternation, as if it had been tarnished by dripping water over time, like a fountain piece.

Once I had removed enough and got the green layer sorted, I started working at it with a mixture of gold, bronze, and brown pigments in areas that would have plausibly been buffed at and made more shiny. For example, I dry-brushed this colour onto the collar bones and neck muscles to good effect! It was harder to define areas like shoulders and thighs in a realistic way which would enhance the appearance of the modelling and not detract from it. I tested out a verdigris wax and a liming wax to see how I could aid the look of age on a spare cast piece, then when I was happy with how I was going to apply and buff this, I worked on the torso.

It was very important throughout this process to test constantly, as I didn’t want to make any damaging and time-wasting mistakes on the actual torso. Altogether, the finishing took me about 3 days in the studio, and I’m very happy with its appearance.

#torso

Testing Finishes

seal the plaster before painting with acrylic with a 1:3 PVA water solution

no need to seal if using shellac straight away

can use just wax onto the plaster if no colouring is desired

we have (brown) shellac which we will mix with methylated spirits and pigments to apply, but white polish or button polish are pale so you can get lighter coloured pigments to work with these

use wax on top of the colour to bed it down, add depth, etc (use white spirit with wax, not meths). Also buff the wax is desired the next day

use any clear lacquer to make it shiny, but beware of having glossy ‘shadows’ because this looks odd

I started simply trying to recreate aged metal effects and trying out the pigments that were available to us, which was really interesting and fun. Some techniques I tried were; sprinkling the powder onto wet shellac, dripping the shellac and pigment, merging drips of different colours. I had thought about various ideas for how to finish the torso:

oxidized copper/iron effect paint and solution

Dark and shiny black like granite - with gold cracks?

gold leaf in parts

a glaze effect of some kind like earthy ceramics

I got a book from the library - ‘BRONZE’ by David Ekserdjian, range of bronze sculptures inside, old, new and ancient, which gave me some direction. I also then found sculptor Christophe Charbonel online, whose work is reminiscent of classic sculpture and is of Gods such as Athena. He works in varying scales, with a series of work called ‘Monumental’, of giant faces, and other work of small horses which are partial; incomplete. His work is often rusty, and looks like it has been dug up from the ground. Some of his work is earthy and brown, less shiny metallic, so i tried recreate this with the pigments to hand – I managed a bit but there weren’t the right colours really to achieve the subtleties.

Using meths to remove areas of shellac and pigment makes nice drips too, and cracks/separates the area you scrub at. I want to know whether I can have a layer underneath which will remain and show through as I remove the outermost layer with meths, so I’ve painted the back of the legs gold, and put clear wax on. Tomorrow I will add a layer of green shellac and then remove it with meths to see what happens.

Currently I’m considering making the torso look very aged and green/blue, and having some darker shading, then some bright gold sprinkled on top or dripped. Alternatively Just making it look like very green old bronze is more simple and may look best.

#torso

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