It's Required of me to use many, many tools when it comes to clay making and sculpting of all kinds. There was the clay wire, the rib tool and so many more. The tools can help to cutting the clay, to making the actual piece or even smoothing it down for the finish product. There are some tools that add texture to the piece to make the piece unique in every way. The one tool that I found strange but very useful was a spoon. I know, I know, a spoon is used for soup or my favorite, ice cream. In the world of sculpting it can be used for smoothing out a clay piece, I found myself using many times. I chose to talk about this tool because it was out of the ordinary showing that you can use just about anything in the world of sculpting. Using the back of the spoon and rubbing it over the clay piece smooths it out giving it a polished look. It helped my pieces by giving it a finished look, and making it look...well nice.
Growing with the knowledge about different uses of clay tools have helped me in the class. When I ask what tool to use for this piece and they give me a name I can picture the tool in my head and go from there. Whereas the beginning people were throwing out names making me helplessly confused. It even makes my clay piece turn out much better to learn about different tools to smooth out the bumps or even an easier way to roll the lump of clay out. This will help me a lot when I carry on next year with Sculpture two and AP sculpture soon followed after that. This way I don't have to bug people with twenty questions on what is what and where is where.
What was your favorite material that you used this year? Why do you like working with it? My favorite material to work with this year was wire. Piano wire, the tree wire, any wire I enjoyed it very much. The way it could bend in different directions and kept me busy. It was one thing that I seemed to have stayed focus on for the whole class period, it gave me something to do, distracted me even. I like how the wire was tough to work with at times, challenging my strength to complete the piece. The piano wire that I worked on was especially fun because the wire was very thick and strong which made me dive into it even more. I just like the way it challenged me, I hate easy things when it comes to projects like this. Gives me something to keep trying at until I get it how I wanted it, the shapes it ends up making to form a beautiful piece. Even the wire tree, it may have not turned out well but I didn't want to smash it because I enjoyed the process very much. I like working with my hands, and bigger picture things and wire gave me all of those qualities. |
Believe it or not I hate working with clay with a pure passion. I specifically said back in art 3 that I would never take sculpture class...like ever. The thing is though I hated Tech Theater much more so I decided to try sculpture out anyways.The first piece we did was a clay tile that turned out awful. Then we made a pit fire piece which of course we had to use clay for that. Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful, but clay, I am just really bad at it. Somethings people are just naturally bad at and clay is one of those things for me. I even tried making a bowl on the Wheel, it turned into a cup. My luck with clay just isn't the best. I dealt with it by trying to see how I could make it easier and painless. Yes, painless, I cut myself on someones clay piece which was was finished. I also discovered this beautiful thing called a molding. When I did the vessel project I was shown how to do a plate. After seeing how to do it I was in love with doing it. I even made a baby head near the end of the school year, again I used a mold. So next time I do a clay piece I will hunt down a mold or something to use to make the form. But I will say, I never want to make another bowl again, it's just boring to me and a bit stressful.
Which project was your least successful? Explain why you consider this work of art unsuccessful? If you were to create this project over, what changes would you make? The wire tree was in my opinion the least successful project out of most of what I have failed at. The thing is the other pieces that I felt like I haven't done well on I hated that piece from the moment I had to think of it. Where as the wire tree it was something I wanted to do more than well on because I found appealing to the eyes when assigned it. I had goals to make it this spectacular piece, planned out all the colored wires and even put a lot of thought into what the base would be. It turned out not what I pictured. That is only because I didn't do it's justice, not adding more branches to show what a tree really is. Even adding to many colors, I found myself wanting one color and not three colors in total. I wanted it to be this elegant piece which turned into a color train wreck that looked, well, trashy almost. I do have plans to make this piece again and this time around I would give it different meaning all together and chose one color. I would also find a different base only because the meaning changed and I feel every part of the piece should tie in with the meaning. Next time I think I will go with the copper wire because in my earlier statement about how I enjoy working with wire, copper I found was the toughest wire to bend. I would even think of what to put at the end of the wire branches, to make the piece pop some. |