Week 1 - Ceramics

15th - 16th September 2014

  Before we started the workshop we were told to bring in two objects to do with '150 Years of Revolution' for a exhibition in Oxford Brookes. I chose a Lego man to represent the change in children's toys. In the past 150 years children toys have shifted from dolls, action figures, cars and trains to entertainment systems such as tablets, phones, computers and games consoles; physical toys are not as popular as they were. My second object is a guitar pick to symbolize the revolution of the music industry e.g.; how women are represented in the music industry (I have done a study on this subject and focused on nowadays women in the music industry last year for my A2. Link here: http://mediaa2projects.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/railton-watson-representation-of-black.html).

  We had to make sketches of them, collage and combined them in some way using Egyptian paste and paper clay. Also, we created wire 3D-ish sculptures.

•   The first picture shows sketches in different media to show a to using different material.
•   The second picture taken is the outcome of a collage of the objects to show the difference there is when layering colours and creating objects from other forms of material.
•   The third picture is the final product of my Lego man only. I didn't have much time to create the guitar pick.

  We did start creating clay figures from our drawings, ripping them up and layering up with the first sketches to create a messier version and transforming that into a 3D sculpture. I forgot to take a photo and I also didn't finish so I don't have a photo of this product.

(16th I was away and missed the last day of the Ceramics workshop)

•   Easy? - The sketching of the objects. To me it was a simpler version of drawing still life and I liked it a lot.

•   Difficult? - The wire sculpture was very difficult to recreate due to my object being quite complex because of how many parts I had to make. I thought of it as simple shapes; if I broke the object down into these simple shapes, put them together and then bend the wire into place afterwards I should be as close as I could get to a simple 3D model of my objects I've chose.

  What I've learnt;

• Take your time - rushing gets you irritated and makes you enjoy it much less.
• Imagine the object in every angle in your mind and sketch it out first.