Final Piece!

Click on the images below to make them bigger, that way they`ll look a

bit better.... Hopefully.

You may of heard me not shuting up about this bloody final piece that I`ve been going on about for months on end now. But I`ve finally got it done, and if anything... I bloody hate it, I literally hate it; all because of the final outcome.
The three days seemed to of gone quite slowly aswell, probably because I had to keep on waiting for everything to dry for a few hours each day... Which then gave me even more time at the end of the three days to just add a few extra final touches.
The whole piece included a lot of fire, a lot of plastic fusion and a lot of burning myself on a hot glue gun that has no temperature control on it whatsoever... I`ve still got some areas healing on my hand from where the hot glue had burnt me quite quickly.
it took a while to complete, and I`m really disappointed in myself since it doesn`t look like anything I had imagined it to look like.

For starts, I had three different boards that I was going to complete for my final piece... Which would be quite a challenge within itself to complete three boards as a collective piece.

To prepare myself for the exam, Since you can`t put everything together until the exam, I began to wrap different layers of papers with different thicknesses around the board and let it all dry... here`s the way you get around the rules though, even though it was wrapped around the board, it wasn`t actually glued down to the board, there was just glue on the paper to hold the shape together. I actually did this same little technique during my last exam in year 12, it allows you to start the layering in the background as int he exam, you won`t have near enough time to wait for everything to dry and for everything to set correctly.
I had to do the paper wrap layers on all three boards, and they had to be quite thick since I had to set them on fire... Yes... I was setting everything on fire, and everyone was getting quite mad with me because of the smell that kept on coming into the art rooms; luckily, I didn`t set any of the fire alarms off... I think I might of been close to doing it twice though.
I also had to have David on stand by with some water, since when I did it by myself, It got wayyyyy put of control and burnt through the back of the canvas and then began burning the paper that was at the back; after that it didn`t stop and I had to scream for David to help me so I could finally put it out, I think I also singed my hair a little bit.


The base layers where the layers that I had to focus on before the three days we had for the exam. The paper layers weren`t stuck down still, but I threw a lot of ink and paint at them that just seemed to be completely random colours at first.
But they eventually blended into the correct colour scheme towards the end of the piece. One of them had a bright, bright green base, another had a very dark grey and another had burgundy... The amazing thing is that, now you can`t tell which one was which unless you look quite closely, you can kind of see the colours a few layers back slowly blending into the greys and white washes that are on the top layers.

The inks really helped pull the colours together too, they where much paler, so when I began to start the white washes on top; they added pale tons from the first few layers and it added a nice effect with the blending.

I think the one thing I really struggled with in these pieces, was the illustrations and text that appeared on top of the initial layers that I created. The pens that I used, yes normal bloody pens, They wouldn`t bloody fade out when I used the white washes over the top. Which then meant that there where a lot of random white patches where I tried to cover up the thicker parts of the text. It was just normal biro pen that I used, but for some reason it just wouldn`t fade out when I covered it.
I also had to use a lot of ripped up pieces of dyed papers, chip paper, packaging paper and paper just with normal scribbles on. Working over the top of these, and then peeling them back off meant that I had layers of colours and texture that I had worked over earlier. A lot of the textures where quite thick and I was getting quite annoyed with myself as the first textured layer I added was wax, which meant that I wouldn`t of been able to draw back over the board normally, then I added plaster and thick emulsion paints.
Worst thing was, I did this to all three boards before realizing that I had completely forgotten to do the illustrations and text first, which meant that I had to use a wallpaper scrapper to get it all back of. That then wasted a lot of time during my exam.


The last few layers that I added where some of the hardest ones, since these would just finish off the piece; they where supposed to be more detailed and more textured, but they came out a lot more differently than anticipated.

Before I worked over the board properly, I cut some holes into the back of one of the boards, and then holes in the other twos paper wraps. This meant that I could then add plastic fusion work through the holes so it looked like they had been burnt away to then be revealed... If that makes any sort of sense. When the plastic fusion came through the back of the board, I had to melt even more plastic over the top to make sure that it blended in properly with the backdrop I had created. This was one of the very last things that I did to my pieces, I wouldn`t of been able to do anything over the top of the plastic since it`s just too stiff to even move. This meant that on the last day, I had a huge, huge rush to melt everything over the top of the board.
On the second day of the exam, I actually had to stay behind to get some preparation work done to then melt on the third day. I had to make loads of layers of flat plastic fusion in the heat press, then I sewed them all together and created patterns and flowers with the stitches.
Then when it came to melting all of the plastic work, I had to go outside and then re-melt all of the plastic fusion with stictches, and the plain pieces of plastic I had to then merge everything back together. It was ridiculously hectic.
Like, very ridiculous and I`ve never stressed out so much over the course of three days before.

Hoping my final piece will look better once it`s

in the exhibition!

The worst part is...
I`M NOT EVEN HAPPY WITH THE WAY IT LOOKS!
I spent three whole days, I spent loads of extra hours staying behind at sixth form to get more work done, only to then be disappointed in all of that hard work that I did.
I know for starts that it`ll look wayyy better once It`s in the exhibition in the gallery, at the moment I`ve just got my board balancing on three plastic boxes and my two smaller boards on two dirty old easels.

I am really, really annoyed at that fact that we didn`t get to go down to the gallery to see what our work would look like, I would of carried it all down there and I would of set up everything myself, but the teachers said no when I asked. It`s just sooo annoying because the projector was dirty, and wonky because it was on my desk, the easels where dirty, my biggest board was just balancing on a bunch of boxes and it kept on falling off whenever I had to lean on it to add more illustrations.

It`s so frustrating.
I`m happy that I`ve finally got it done, and I`m kind of happy with the way it looks at the moment; but I do know for a fact that it`ll be better when it`s up on display in the gallery.
I need to clean the projector aswell, and hopefully find a table that isn`t wonky, find some easels that aren`t as dirty as the ones up in our art class and then get some metal hooks in the back of the biggest board so it isn`t left balancing.

It`s just waiting for the exhibition now...


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