Using My Research

Pieces Inspired By Artists

After researching into artists such as Patrick Heron and Dylan Gebbia Richards, and after experimenting with one coat plaster, I thought it would be best to move away from creating sculptures that stood tall, as I found myself creating the same type of things I had been making a year previously. I wanted to experiment with creating reliefs, which meant that I could still experiment with making sculpture, just in a different manner. 

I started my new sculptures by making a flat slab of plaster using the cottling technique. This technique means that you can get smooth lines and can create a slab of any size or thickness to your liking. I chose to do this because I felt that using cardboard as a base which I had done before would get too soggy and wouldn't be strong enough to hold the amount of plaster i planned to put onto it. Whereas if I were to use a solid base made out of the same material, as long as I made a good batch of plaster, it would be strong enough to hold the weight.

Unfortunately, the first batch of plaster never set properly, and rather than letting it go to waste, I used my research into Patrick Heron, and experimented with his choice in colouring and his technique.
Heron would create abstract pieces using information of his surroundings to create resemblances of what he remembered, rather than looking at the object in front of him. So I started looking for things that were in my vicinity, but rather than paying attention to drawing them accurately, I just scratched a simple and abstract shape of the object into the plaster.

As I painted the background, I realised that I didn't really like the colour combination I had chosen, and that it didn't really turn out as planned, and rather than painting just the inside of the shape, which I felt would have been boring, I chose to use a bright yellow to stand out from the dark green and blue to draw the outline of each shape.

I used a small amount of blue to fill in circles in particular, and in any other places I felt were over powered by the yellow. I also used red to fill in most of the lines. When filling in the shapes with colour, rather than filling them in neatly, I decided to apply the paint unevenly so as to add some dimension back into the plaster.

After this, I attempted to use the cottling method again, but this time, making the plaster uneven on the surface, particularly on the corners. Thankfully, this batch of plaster set properly, and so I was able to work properly on it.

For this piece, I had been looking at an artist who created texture by adding different layers upon layers of colours. I started with a base of three colours, which were given texture by mixing the paint with sand. Each different colour had a different thickness so that they would all apply differently.

For this piece, I plan to keep building it up using different colours. The way I plan to apply the colour is by watering down paint, and spraying it from the underside of the bumps created by the mix of paint and sand, so that it will enunciate only the underside of the texture.