Wire Tree Reflection

I enjoyed working with wire. It was a really fun experience.

Main difficulties:

• Kept poking/scratching myself with the wires
• Thicker pieces of wire (twisted together) were difficult to cut with the wire cutters

Vocabulary/terms in this project: (there really wan't a lot of vocab)

• Adhesive - glue; sticks pieces of wood together, important to use different adhesives for different materials
• Metal wire - slender, string-like piece of metal that can be manipulated through bending or cutting
• Wire cutters - tool used to cut wire

I've never worked with wire before. Mr. Swinehart suggested that I could make a wire tree. I found some pictures, and thought it looked cool. I like the overall composition of my wire sculpture. I used a rock as a base. In a way, the rock can represent Jesus, the foundation. The tree can represent my faith. Through Jesus, my faith can grow like a tree. Anyways, I think I could have done a better job with the roots. I tried to make the roots more "natural" and had some roots longer and more twisted than others. I like the branches. It's nicely spread out. However, it would be even better if I had a wider variety of branches. Overall, the wire sculpture looks decent. I like the silver color of the tree.

Wire Tree Process (December 16)

From the last time I left off, I combined three smaller trees together to form a larger single tree. In an attempt to make the tree more "full", I combined one more smaller tree to the larger tree. I ended up with a lot of roots, so I trimmed some away with the wire cutters. I twisted some of the roots together to make them thicker and others thinner, like a real tree. The ends of the roots were frayed. I spread out the branches and the roots. I brought a few rocks from home and chose one that I thought would make a good base. I ended using the biggest one that was slightly uneven. I wrapped the roots around the stone. If the roots were too long, I cut it with wire cutters. Finally, I used Scotch spray glue to spray the stone, attaching the roots on firmly.

  

Wire Tree Process (December 11)

Three smaller trees combined into one tree

To make a wire tree, first you have to cut pieces of wire that are of equal length. The number of wires you cut out varies. It depends on how big or thick you want your tree to be. The more wires you put together, the more branches you can make. Twist the wires in the area where you want the trunk until you have a solid stick. Spread the roots out for stability. Then, twist the top wires together to make branches. At any point, you can separate the wires to form smaller branches sticking out from the thicker ones. Make a few more trees and if you want, combine them together to make a bigger tree. That was what I did. I created two trees, one bigger and the other one smaller, and combined them. It looked kind of lopsided, so I created a third one and wrapped that one too. After putting them together, I had too many roots. I think I'll just cut a few.

Wire Tree Inspiration/Artists

Two artists captured my attention with their wire tree sculptures.

Minskis (from Deviant Art)

The wire sculptures look very realistic and show the imperfections of trees in nature. Trees in nature do not stand completely upright. He also creatively put the trees in a setting with rocks. I'm not sure if it represents anything, but it sculpture itself seems to hold the artist's emotions. The overall presentation is very nice.

Sal Villano

Sal Villano was born into a large extended family of artists. From a young age, he payed close attention to art and was attracted to different kinds of visual expressions. He worked as a a part time sulptor while he was attending college. His uncle inspired him to become a sculptor. Sal saw his uncle creating figures of animals using wire and tissue paper. 

I like the expressive shape of the trees. The wire sculptures he make show the different seasons of trees. I especially like the wintery ones, the ones without leaves. The form of the tree was clearly thought out and not randomly put together. Again, the trees are really realistic. I hope that I would be able to use this inspiration and create something just as creative.

Wire Tree Planning

Objectives:

• To experiment with wire
• To think creatively when creating a sculpture

Materials:

• Wire
• Wire cutter

Procedure:

1. Form the wire into a shape you want
2. Use the wire cutter to cut of any excess wire
3. Combine the wires together to form a sculpture

Initial Ideas:

Mr. Swinehart suggested that I could make a tree, so I made one.

Felt Needle Reflection

Working with felt needle was fun. I didn't really encounter many difficulties in this project.

Main difficulties:

• Kept poking myself
• Sometimes, the felt would get stuck in the sponge (minor problem)
• A bit difficult to make the penguin's body parts equal

Vocabulary/terms in this project:

• Blending - mixing fibers of different colors or types together
• Carding - using carders to spread wool out and separate it into fibers
• Felt - fabric where wool fibers are entangled
• Felting needles - usually 3-sided needle with barbs on the side for meshing the felt/wool together

This project was more an arts-and-crafts project. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it. Sometimes, it was difficult for me to get the proportions straight. In my opinion, the best part of my felt needle project was the penguin's head and body. Well, that's pretty much the whole thing. Anyways, I liked the head of the penguin because it was well-proportioned and round. For the body, I originally created it using white. But then, i added on grey felt. So, the body is kind of like a mixture of white and grey. The effect is pretty cool. Unfortunately, because I poked too much, there are some small holes, where the needles were, on the body. Next time, I should challenge myself more and try to create something more detailed and creative. Penguins are cute and all, but there really wasn't a lot of creativity in it. The creativity in this project would include the colors chosen, the overall shape, and the style.

Architecture Reflection

This was my first time working with wood. I learnt a lot from it.

Main difficulties:

• Some measurements were inaccurate --> differences in structure
• Hard to cut the thick boards in a straight line
• Cutting the windows were time consuming
• Some gaps in structure - wood pieces did not line up perfectly

Vocabulary/terms used in this project:

• Adhesive - glue; sticks pieces of wood together, important to use different adhesives for different materials
• Adjustable clamps - (I called them "long clamps"); consists of a screw and bar with moveable shoe to allow a wide clamping range
• Carving tool - in my case, I used it to smoothen out the sides
• C-clamps - clamp shaped like a c; used to secure wood to an object (ex: table)
• Cutter - tool used for cutting objects (ex: wood)
• Drill - power tool that makes holes in objects
• Sandpaper - strong paper coated with a layer of sand for the purposes of smoothing or polishing
• Saw - tool used for cutting thicker objects; has a thin blade with sharp metal teeth

This architecture project was unlike anything I have done before. The structure of the architecture was carefully thought out because we wanted it to look as realistic and as "cathedral-like" as possible. I liked the pillars and the front part of the cathedral the most. It made the project more realistic. However, the sides was not elaborately decorated. This was because we didn't have a lot of time and our skills (carving) wasn't good. Any attempts to carve a design on the side may ruin what we have done. But, next time, we should decorate it more, just like a real cathedral. Perhaps, we can cut arches into the wood. Also, in the future, we should make sure that we have precise and accurate measurements to avoid having pieces of wood not lining up. Overall, it was fun working with wood. By thinking of a design for the project, it got my creativity flowing.

3D Mosaic Dove Reflection

This sculpture was part of a learning process. I made mistakes, but in the end, I still completed it.

In my other posts, I have already stated the difficulties I faced. But here they are anyways.

• When I was using the clay, it was difficult to attach the wings onto the body
• After firing it, there was a crack on the body because I didn't connect the two hollowed-out halves together well
• It was difficult to break the mosaic pieces
• After putting the grout in, for some reason, mosaic pieces started to fall off. This could have been because of the glue's strength.

Vocabulary/terms used in this project:

• Adhesive - used to bond an tessera to a base
• Bone dry - leaving the sculpture out to dry; to let the moisture get out of the sculpture; before firing the sculpture in the kiln
• Cutting/hammering - method used to break materials into various sizes of tessera
• Grout - a type of cement that fills in the gaps between the tessera
• Interstice/joint - space/gaps between the tessera (mosaic pieces)
• Keying - in my case, scoring up two parts of clay to help it adhere together better
• Mosaic - decoration of a surface with small tesserae (glass, stone, ceramic, etc.)
• Tessera - small pieces that make a mosaic

I think that this project shows the effort I put into it. Originally, I had wanted the composition to be more interesting, so I wanted to make a mother and baby dove. However, things didn't turn out as planned, and I ended up making them separate. In my opinion, the best part of this structure was the form of the bird. The wings were spread out and the head was upright. My least favorite part was the head. The eyes were a bit beady and the beak was too big. But, as I said before, it is all a learning process. Overall, working with mosaic pieces was a fun experience. To improve, next time, I can pay closer attention to detail to prevent myself from making as many mistakes.

Felt Needle Process (December 6)

Experimenting with felt needle was really fun. I decided to make a penguin. But, before I started on it, I played around and created a bear head out of spheres to familiarize myself with this material.

Creating a felt penguin was not very difficult. I started off by making a white sphere for its head. Then, I attached black felt onto it to make the "skin" and the eyes. I added a beak. It was difficult to make the beak because it was really small. Then, I made the body using white felt. I covered it with a thin layer of grey felt. I made wings for it. It was difficult to make the wings even sized. So, I used scissors to make them even. Lastly, I made the feet. I attached all the pieces together, and made a penguin.

When I first used the needle, I kept poking my fingers. As I was able to control the needle better, I didn't poke my fingers as much.

Overall, this felt needle project was a fun and interesting experience.

(sorry for the bad quality photos)

Felt Needle Inspiration/Artist(s)

I have never heard of using felt needle before. Well, last year, I saw a student working on it, but I had no idea what it was. When I saw last year's syllabus/schdeule at the beginning of the year, felt needle sounded interesting, so I searched it up on youtube. Youtube showed me may different examples of felt needling. You can insert felt onto 2d surfaces. You can also make 3d objects with felt too. I saw Youtubers making animals, flowers, and even mushrooms out of felt! I found it very interesting and wanted to make it one of my projects.

So yes, I got most my inspiration for this project from Youtube.

Mr. X Stitch

There is a group of people that makes up "Mr. X Stitch". That group of people come from many different parts of the world. They work with needles and produce high quality hand stitched, machine stitched, and needle felting works. Regarding their needle felting, they make a lot of fantasy pieces. For example, they created a hybrid of a pig and a unicorn. I have never seen anything like that. They also created a number of adorable dragons. Other fantasy pieces they created would include human mushrooms and tree elves. Those fantasy works are really interesting and unlike any I have seen. Their hybrid animals partly inspired me to want to make felt animals.

Felt Needle Planning

Objectives:

• To learn how to use needles and felt to create an object
• To experiment with arts and crafts materials

Materials:

• Needles (and spare ones)
• Different colors of felt
• Sponge
• Scissors

Procedure:

1. Pick the felt of your choice
2. Poke it with a needle
3. Keep poking it
4. Continue to poke it until you form your desired shape
1. For round parts, roll it into a ball-like shape and poke it
2. For longer parts, roll it into a long shape and poke it
5. When you have all your parts, attach it together by poking it some more, in the area where the two pieces meet
1. If you have difficulty, get a little bit of felt and put it between the two parts you want to attach together. That little bit of felt acts like "glue"
6. To make your piece of felt harder, keep poking it until it feels somewhat hard

Initial Ideas:

I had a few things in mind that I wanted to create.

• Dog
• Alpaca
• Penguin

In the end, I settled to make a penguin.

Architecture Process (December 6)

We had everything cut out. In the end, we chose to cut windows. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. First, we had to drill a hole in the area where we wanted our window. Then, we had to unscrew the saw and insert the blade through the hole. We attached the saw back together and cut according to our lines. We repeated that process for every window.

We stuck the front part of the cathedral onto a piece of wood. It didn't line up very accurately because some pieces of wood were slightly longer. Anyways, we used a white glue to stick it on. We made a simple design for the big window in front.

When everything was cut out, we started assembling all the little pieces together. We glued 3/5 pillars on each side. We didn't stick the other 4 because we were afraid that it would affect the long clamp's clamping.

Secondly, we glued the 2 sides to the front. We used large clamps to hold it in place.

(you might not see it, but the two spaces are uneven) 

Thirdly, we separately attached the back pieces together. Then, as a whole, we attached the back section to the rest of the structure. The long clamps were not long enough, so we clamped the long clamp in the hole of a window. (not pictured, sorry)

Finally, we attached the roof onto the structure.

There were a few gaps in the structure. So, we ended up using skewer sticks to cover the gaps and holes up.

This project is pretty much complete. We only need to decorate it up a bit and stick the final points on the back. Well, we stuck them on. The points looked kind of short and stocky, but it was better than having a flat top.

Finally finished!!!