Final Piece!

Since my theme was dark in nearly all aspects; and for my final piece and exhibition piece i wanted to liven it up a little... Stop using dark colours and make "Respecting The Dead" a bit more happier and a bit more supportive towards those who will see my final piece. 

For my final piece, i wanted to work on a large scale; the majority of work we had done for this project was small. I also wanted to use a technique that i hadn`t practiced fully and to the best of my ability. But it still had to link into the theme i had chosen; so i based my final piece off of a Japanese based burial. 

I`m not quite sure as to if they do this anymore; but one way of saying good bye to those who have passed away was to send Lotus flowers down a lake. For everyone who attended the burial, they got one flower each and when they were taken to a lake or a river nearby... They would place the Lotus flowers in the water, one at a time and let them float away. This method was supposed to represent the people as flowers going with the deceased to the other side. When you think about it, this has to be the most thoughtful and the sweetest way of saying goodbye to someone forever... I would want this done at my funeral to be honest with you!

If you didn`t know already; My Mamma (Grandma) passed away the 9th Of November in 2013, she was 73 years old. For 3 years she suffered from Liver Cancer and passed away in her sleep. She was a lovely women and we all miss her very much, whenever we can we go to see her grave and pay our respects to her. I wanted my final piece to big, to be close to me and to show respect to her as a her person. My Mamma (Grandma) has influenced my work a lot through year 12, and as i`m already planning ahead for the next exam unit... She will be influencing my next project. 

 The board that i used is 2inches thick and is higher 6ft or a low 7ft tall, i didn`t measure it. It originally was used for a student two years ago who made a horror scene about euthanasia. with his permission i took off all of the plaster and ever other material imaginable that was stuck down to this board, which took me three hours to do after school, and then attempt to lift it all the way to my art room which was three rooms down... When the rest of the class got in the next day they were very confused as to why there was an enormous board leaned up against the shelves.

The materials that were used on the board by Dillon (The one who made the horror looking scene), were nearly impossible to take off, the plaster had been left to long that i couldn`t scrape it off with anything. I had to use a base layer of thin chip paper, i layered it up and it eventually it made the bumps seem like they`ve evened out... I think i only used three layers of A1 sized chip paper but it still evened out a little.

After the first chip paper layer had dried, i added a fourth layer... Waiting for things to dry when you know what you are exactly going to do next can be the most frustrating thing; but if you work on top of chip paper when it`s wet it`ll rip easily, so it`s best to just leave it and get on with something else. Once it was dry, i used blue and green Batik Ink. I didn`t water them down or anything; i just poured it straight on and spread it onto the paper with a normal paint brush; Whilst it was still wet i added the odd bits of green so it didn`t seem plain and it seemed more water like.

Bleach is my best friend, for everything i`ve done in my sketchbook and even the paper i write on has been inked and bleached. The yellow bits that you can see in random places is actually some strong bleach, however; you can get different shades and different colours by adding different amounts of water to the bleach. For instance, if you use bleach on top of the ink from a fineliner or black Batik ink; it turns it Orange.

Since i`m only 5.1ft tall, working from the top of the board was difficult for me. I had to stand on a table and put all of my materials on the top. The first layer i used was bleach, i simply just dripped it down from the top of the board and let it run down. On top of the bleach i used hot wax; at school we have White wax pots that heat up wax and eventually it`s just a pot of what looks like water... The only difference is that it`s boiling, when it dries it`s just a big lump, it adds texture to work and it hurts like hell if it touches your skin. Dripping it down means it`s adding bulk, it also runs down the board quite far.

Before i dripped anything else down the board i used white emulsion and dry brushed in certain places to knock the colour back a little bit. after i knocked it back some more i began adding the flowers around the bottom of the board. obviously normal glue won`t work, so i used a basic hot glue gun and a lot of glue sticks...

If you want to learn how to make Origami flowers... Then do it the same way i did; YOUTUBE!!! I looked at youtube tutorials on how to make Origami flowers about 2 years ago and i still know how to make them, surprisingly. Every flower needs 12 sheets of paper, once you`ve made one you can make them again and again, it`s seriously easy to do and they look cute. You can make them any size and out of anything.

This is an image of the final board when it was first taken into the gallery for exhibition and for the final examination. I`ve added even more smaller flowers to the board, if the smallest ones were an actual size; it would be A7.
I`ve added more materials to drip from the top of the board aswell. I`ve used a lot of plaster to add texture, i added white paint to make sure it came out the right colour. i`ve also dripped wallpaper paste mixed with white paint.
When i added more materials to drip down from the top of board; i had to stand on a table and stretch up to do it, you have to be really careful when dripping the plaster, make sure you don`t get any on your clothes... It doesn`t come out easily. I also dripped little bits of the plaster in different places of the board so the plaster at the top didn`t see so blocky and so it didn`t stick out that much.


 Hearing everyones comments about how good my work is and how much they loved it really boosted my confidence an has actually made me pretty proud of myself! It`s made me think about the next project and the amount of effort i`m going to put in to it...

Everyone loved my work and overall the exhibition turned out great! i`m proud of my work and how it turned out in the end. I`m glad this project is over though, i want to see something new instead of this giant board in our Art room...

~Thanks For Reading!