I got this idea from a sort of strange, surreal music video that had a lot to do with rocks and natural movement. There was magma and sand moving in sort of a collage-like fashion. The spastic movements of each prop was so neat to me. The coolest ting was, it reflected the human relationship (whether it be love, friends, or even relatives). The rockets were sedimentary which was in a way symbolic.
first I took a costume mask that I found at Hobby Lobby. Originally i was going to make the mask from layers using foam-core, but i didn't think that the features of a human face would show up so distinctively, so I used a mask instead. The eyes were supposed to be closed, so I took masking tape and cut it into rectangle, inserting it into the inside of the mask and pushing it into the sockets of the eyes, creating the dome shape that an eyeball would have. I was going to use foam-core over the entire face, but again, decided that would hide the facial features, so i used hot glue and made lines across the face for the "smaller". From my references, I looked at the more distinct layers of rock, and used foam-core to create those layers. Hot glue was used to smooth the around the foam-core layers.
My teacher suggested Gesso as a good paint primer for this project (as I was using Acrylic, which is impossibly hard to cover dried Hot Glue with -_-). It was especially helpful for the eye lids, because I put masking tape on the front of the mask to make a more realistic eyelid. Before actually painting the face, I inserted glue below the mouth, coming out of it, to make it appear as magma spewing out of the mouth.
The total duration to paint this mask was about 2.5 hours (and then another hour to paint touchups the next day). I am not very pleased with this photo: its not the best representation of this mask, as it appears more shiny in the photo.
I really regret not having taken progress photos of the main body of the sculpture. So instead, Ill just discuss it. I used 16 gauge wire from the wire sculpture conversation piece project in my 1st semester material studies class, to create a frame. Then, with a monstrous amount of paper mache mix and newspaper, i paper mache'd the frame. It was quite difficult because I had large spaces between the net like frame, since I didn't want the frame to start the sculpture off super heavy with just metal.
This photo is actually from after spray painting the foam body of the sculpture. I decided that (hot) gluing the shredded foam around the base of the mask/face would make the mask look more natural when attached to the rest of the sculpture.
This is the final piece. Im hoping when/if it is displayed, it will hang a little lower, more at like average human height. originally it was supposed to look like a volcano, but with the teal accents (especially in the yarn), it looks more like an underwater volcano. There are always improvements i want to make, and this was no exception. I am still trying to figure out how to use hot glue in a cleaner manner.
I think doing these sculptures are important especially since I had 3D art this semester. I don't think it would make much sense to do 2D artwork, because it doesn't show what Ive learned this semester; and its not like I would turn in a sculpture for a semester of 2D art.
