This was the initial sculpt which was executed on my iPad in the application Nomad. I was more interested in interesting forms than a coherent, aesthetically pleasing design. As with all of my art, it was not finished so I continued to refine the shapes into the following final sculpt. I called it the "deacon" due to its semi-religious shape.
Grace Denner: Week 8 Tree Stump
The Model:
In the popular tabletop role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), a mimic is an amorphous creature with the ability to assume the shape of seemingly harmless objects. My desire to create some sort of mimic and play with natural textures led me to make the Tree Stump Mimic, the model for the rest of my compositions. The model was created in Mudbox, refined in Rhino, scaled in Maya, and printed out using Grey PLA filament.
Composition 1:
My idea was to treat this like one would treat any D&D miniature and leave it as a solid material that I’d paint over afterward. This plan, however, did not play out as intended. While preparing my first pour, I used Smooth-Cast™ ONYX™ FAST resin and only had about 60 seconds from the initial mix to when the resin solidified, and I stirred the mixture for too long. As I poured, the liquid became suddenly solid towards the end. This semi-solid pour resulted in a half-poured mold with a stable but fluid-looking fold protruding from the mold.
With no other choice, I let the cast dry and waited to see what it would look like out of the mold. What resulted was an exciting “moment in time” piece that, to me, captured the art of the pour. I decided then to roll with it, not only because of how expensive the materials were and how much I didn’t want to have to buy more but because I knew if I could tweak the piece just a bit, it would turn into something incredibly unique.
I set out afterward to use the rest of my resin to cast the mixing cup itself, stirring and then rotating the cup at an angle to coat the cup and have the resin harden in the motion of being poured out of it. I was attempting to repeat my first mistake because despite the saying “two wrongs don't make a right,” I was determined to make them work.
After this, I used epoxy resin clay to attach the two pieces, let them dry, and painted the clay black.
The hardest part of this sculpture was figuring out how to mount it. I had this vision of suspending it in mid-air but struggled to find anything that would support its weight. I ended up drilling a hole into the bottom and supported the sculpture underneath using an acrylic rod. For the base, I carved and rounded the edged of a wooden board, drilled a similar hole, and stained and coated it with polyurethane to give it a simple yet clean look.
The process of creating this first composition was all about embracing my mistakes. I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ve never done 3D modeling, 3D printing, mold making, etc., and I made many mistakes. However, I worked with these mistakes, built upon them, and turned them into a piece I am proud to have made. This piece captures the art of the pour in casting and celebrates the movement and life that can come from the process.
Composition 2:
For my second composition, I knew I needed to get the casting right, and I practiced the timing a few times to get a consistent cast. When I had a feel for that, I went ahead and started figuring out my next sculpture. I knew I wanted to use some pigment this time around and wanted to make the eye of the stump pop as it blended into the rest of the figure a bit too much for my liking. With this in mind, I dusted the eye along with the mushrooms protruding out the sides of the trunk with a strong gold pigment, then mixed some more pigment into the resin. This mix resulted in a black trunk with gold accents.
After removing the cast from the mold, I was unsure of the direction I wanted to go in with the trunk. It was pretty but lacking. Even with the gold accents, it felt like it was plain. Then I pulled out the leftover resin from the mixing cup. It was this beautifully ethereal mix of black and gold in the shape of an open circle. Jokingly I placed it on the trunk as the halos people see in classical paintings of saints. The fluid swirls of pigment perfectly complimented the static nature of the trunk; the halo almost seemed to move. I stuck the halo in place with more epoxy clay, let it dry, and painted it over with black, blending the paint up into the halo.
Neither of these compositions ended how I originally envisioned them. I imagined using textured paints to emphasize the bark, maybe adding some moss, and painting over the eye to make it bloodshot. These compositions became what they are now by taking my time, seeing each step as it happened, and figuring out how to use what I had to make something interesting. This was a learning process for me, full of experimentation, going with the flow, and using mistakes and scraps to make something beautiful.
