art - gargoyle
Jul. 4th, 2011 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwangoOnce again, the local 4th of July Art Festival has come and gone. This year I had really meant to start working around May on something to enter, and totally failed to actually do anything until the middle of June, which lead to me working up until the very last day before it was due.
I carved up a bunch of Styrofoam, connected the bits together with toothpicks, bound them more securely in place with Parafilm, and then slathered the whole mess with acrylic paint. Add marbles for eyes, and we have my newest friend.
http://alum.wpi.edu/~wes/images/gargoyle_small.jpg
The good news is that I got first place in the non-professional sculpture category (I reasoned that I should enter as a non-professional because having never built a gargoyle out of Styrofoam before I could hardly classify myself as a professional builder of Styrofoam gargoyles). The only bit of information that detracts from this accomplishment is that I don't think there was anything else in my category...I think the other 5 or so sculptures were all professional. Still, I have a ribbon and prize that at least covered the cost of materials, entry fee, and makes me feel a little better about the UNCOUNTABLE HOURS I spent on this thing. Because, wow, it took longer than I expected it to. But it was a learning process. If I make another such thing, hopefully it will go quicker.
I carved up a bunch of Styrofoam, connected the bits together with toothpicks, bound them more securely in place with Parafilm, and then slathered the whole mess with acrylic paint. Add marbles for eyes, and we have my newest friend.
http://alum.wpi.edu/~wes/images/gargoyle_small.jpg
The good news is that I got first place in the non-professional sculpture category (I reasoned that I should enter as a non-professional because having never built a gargoyle out of Styrofoam before I could hardly classify myself as a professional builder of Styrofoam gargoyles). The only bit of information that detracts from this accomplishment is that I don't think there was anything else in my category...I think the other 5 or so sculptures were all professional. Still, I have a ribbon and prize that at least covered the cost of materials, entry fee, and makes me feel a little better about the UNCOUNTABLE HOURS I spent on this thing. Because, wow, it took longer than I expected it to. But it was a learning process. If I make another such thing, hopefully it will go quicker.
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Date: 2011-07-05 05:59 am (UTC)yeah, sculpture is a whole different ball of wax and until you've had a go at it, you often don't realize how much time goes into these things. I've definitely had days like that where I spend hours on something and I appear to have done NOTHING. Or more annoying, you spend hours building the understructure to hold the thing together... parts that will never actually be visible in the finished product, but their absence would be very noticible.
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Date: 2011-07-05 06:46 am (UTC)Up until this point my sculpture media have been Sculpey/other polymers, wire, aluminum foil, or just plain Parafilm, but it's always been just one material at a time. Well, maybe some wire frames for Sculpey. But this was certainly my first crack at using Parafilm with anything else, or carving up Styrofoam for anything other than D&D walls and obstacles. It was...an experience. And my god, yes, I'd spend two or three hours on it and realize that there was no immediately discernible progress! Where did the time go?! What have I been doing?
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Date: 2011-07-05 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-05 02:15 pm (UTC)Do you think he ate any of the other entries overnight after the festival closed for the day? :)