• General

    Giant chocolate slabs?

    4, April, 2010 /

    Okay, bit of a gap now, I need to go back and fill in what’s been happening.

    But here is the basic final design – the tiles will actually be the white sections – the negative spaces.  The first set has been made, just waiting for them to dry – they’re quite thick!

    There will also be a glass element to the piece, but to be honest, this is difficult to decide until I have the ceramics pieces made – everything looks so different when you scale it up.  Initially, it was going to be a full glass layer, but I began thinking that that was going to be complicated, as fixing the glass isn’t straightforward – I want the glass to stand away from the ceramic sections, so that it casts lights and patterns on to the background.

    I am also beginning to think that the glass elements may well be unnecessary too – overkill if you like.  But as much as I like working with photoshop, it really doesn’t portray the glass very well.  Maybe when I have the proper pieces laid out, I can then tell how much glass will be the right amount.

    Anyway, this week I was making my first set of ceramic tiles for the piece – they aren’t good enough quality in my opinion, and I am quite sure my tutors will agree!  But for me it was more about practicing handling the clay, working out the best way to do things, and of course seeing if it fires ok (Who knows if shrinkage will affect the proportions badly, the tiles may warp, all sorts of problems if the kiln fairies aren’t kind – yes, there are fairies for ceramics as well as glass).  I made these this week, and when I was turning them over, they just reminded me of chocolate… Happy Easter!

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  • General

    Where I am at now

    8, March, 2010 / No Comments

    For tomorrow (Tuesday) I should have some sort of finalised design. My tutor wants me to display the finished idea, life size…. yikes, that’s about 150 cm square…. ish.

    I worked out, that to print that off on my trusty HP, it’ll be about 40 sheets of A4.

    As I am still totally divided two designs, that’s two sets…. one will be based on square tiles, the other is far more organic… here’s the two sort of, ideas…

    These are not finalised, but they are the kind of idea (the second one needs some grid lines). I know they look quite similar side by side, but I think the finished article would look quite different.

    The first one would be technically more challenging I think, with large, organic cut outs in ceramic… with occasional glass tiles. The second one would be built up of square tiles, either screen printed, or textured with the design. Not sure what the glass elements of that one would be yet, I have to work a bit more in this design tonight.

    When I display it tomorrow, the circuit board design will be gridded up to show it has tiles. I think if I go with the second one, the circuit board idea has to be even stronger than it shows here, perhaps a little more complex?

    Anyhow, have to go, lots to do today, including going to Nottingham, and of course, printing of LOTS of sheets of paper, cutting them out….

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  • General

    So why this blog (as well!)

    8, March, 2010 /

    Okay, this is the first entry in my Independent Study blog.

    I don’t know if I will keep this up, or if, as I get busier and busier (ha, as if it’s not busy already!), I might be under too much stress and pressure for time to spare to do this.

    But, if I can maintain it, it should help me to document my progress, something which I usually terrible at doing.

    So, another post in a moment to see if this all works okay.

    Dawn

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