15.10.20 - Vacuum Forming, Concrete, continuing work

  

To guarantee a successful vacuum form, I chose my plaster flower and clay beetle because they are flat objects that don't have any undercuts so the plastic won't go beneath, trapping them in. I'm happy with how they came out, especially the beetle because of the sense of animation that the legs have, I imagine that he has just fallen into some wet concrete and left this shape, a captured moment. The flower on the other hand feels more static and inanimate. If I were to reproduce more of the objects I would use a different moulding compound like gel-flex because it replicates more of the surface detail and is more flexible, making it easier to remove the objects - in this case the beetle came out easily but one of the petals broke off the flower. 

I also vacuum formed my keyring which is a personal comfort object, and I think it came out really nicely because you can see the texture of the string and other details like the eyes. I think it fits nicely with my project because although it isn't an insect, it reminds me of the doll-like appearance of some of the ones I have made and uses a similar material, as well as connecting to one of my underlying themes which is childhood.

In another experiment, I tried putting one of my fabric beetles in the vacuum former and this really squashed it down and made a strange wrinkly cast  that includes the shapes of the different beads. If I put it facing the other way up it would have come out easier because a few of the beads got caught and didn't want to come out straight away. Also some of the colour from the sequins transferred onto the plastic due to the heat.

With this one, I arranged the objects in a trail as if they are following each other but I don't think it was successful because I didn't let it vacuum around the objects for long enough so the shapes look quite vague and lack definition.

Next we experimented with bending plastic after heating it in the oven at 160 degrees, and I think the good thing about this is that you can reheat it if you aren't happy with the shape.

I prefer how the transparent plastic turned out because the edge catches the light and I think generally the see through effect is really interesting to look at, especially with the colour appearing in the shadows in a ghost-like way. The opaque piece of plastic was larger and wider so it wasn't as easy to twist into dynamic shapes but I like how it looks completely different depending on which way you look at it. It is quite shiny as well so I like the way the light bounces off the edges and highlights the curves.

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I started off by making a mixture of concrete powder and water - unlike plaster, the water goes in last, and I used this to coat the inside of the mould so that the exterior of the object will have a smoother finish. 

To fill the rest, I made concrete using the same process but incorporating sand to give it structural strength, so the finished objects won't break as easily as my plaster flower did. I filled the snail mould as well as the flower one.

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Since the concrete takes a while to dry, I spent the rest of the afternoon working on the patchy beetle that I started, and I drew over the outline in pen so that I could see it when flipped over for the stitching together of the two sides. I think the linear silhouette actually looked really nice even though it wasn't intended to be a good drawing, it's just very simplified and has a sense of calmness. Anyway, after I finished stitching I cut the shape out and inverted it to begin stuffing, and the final stage will be to sew the end shut, which I hope to do tomorrow.

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Lastly, when I got home I decided to try out using the plastic cast of the doll to press clay into. It left a nice impression of the figure in the clay and I decided not to leave it in there to dry because it might break or get stuck, so I pushed it out and tried not to lose too much detail. The first attempt was less successful because the arms didn't come out with the rest of the body but it worked the second time. When it is dry, I'd like to embellish the doll in a similar way to my sequinned fabric beetle and change the nature of the object from something with connotations of folk-lore and witch-craft and reducing it to something useless but friendly looking. Another way I could do this is by putting the beads and sequins in the mould and then adding the clay or even pouring cement on top so that they would be embedded into the surface. I could also do this with a beetle shaped mould.