Schoolwork 2nd entry

I enjoyed sculpture sessions as I was able to bring some prior experience and knowledge and sometimes think it's easier to work in 3D.  Whereas in drawing and painting you are striving to create the illusion of something three dimensional.  Here we were required to sculpt a head in clay, roughly based on our own proportions.  Mine seems to have quite a thin neck for this reason and has resulted in quite an androgynous looking specimen as I think I was intending it male.  Also we were told to think about doing something else to it, maybe for example, add texture.  The idea was to then make a mould and subsequently a plaster cast.

I chose to make the mould with latex with a plaster casing for support.  I had a lot of thoughts on embedding something in the mould during casting to create a head cast that had chunks missing and appeared to be made of blocks, (based on my urban habitat thoughts of boxes and cubes which the built man made world seems to consist of).  I'd thought it would have been difficult to create neat cube like structures with the clay and the only way I could think of was to stick some cube like structures against the inside rubber of the mould to pull out of the cast later.  This would be difficult though as like I say, the neck was very narrow.  Based on my thoughts about space and how walls that we create delineate the space we inhabit, I was then thinking of slicing the cast head, omitting some of it and instead putting in something to indicate a wall.  As if the head had been able to inhabit the space within two separate rooms at once.  I thought cement fondue would be suitable for this.  Due to the given time scales though within our sessions I decided to instead look at finishes to apply to the head as this would be quicker.

Playing with different textures that could be applied to cast

I experimented with a few textures and as already mentioned in my first post had been thinking about disrupted lines and contour lines to indicate form.  I played around with sticking cotton thread in lines and liked this effect.

Idea for finish to head cast

I painted the cast in black ink as this would give a matt finish making it easy for the cotton to stick, and black, to make my white cotton thread nice and easy to see.  Then applying the cotton to the cast in an abstract contour type way before painting it with matt black enamel.  Finally picking out the texture and highlighting with a silver finish.

I'm really keen to further experiment with sculpture.  I'm also sure the bulk of it will be figurative work, for example the work of Anthony Gormley has a lot of resonance for me.  I'm interested in using other materials, resin for example and transparent materials and metal, not only for the interesting refraction of light but I want to explore the figure and challenge the sense of reality we have, and it not necessarily being the way it appears.