Thursday, October 9, 2008

Art & Soul: Day One

I love learning new stuff - and it's one of those things that gets my creativity fired up. (Along with really good coffee!) September felt a little slow art-making wise, but October started with a bang because of Art & Soul Portland and I've been manically making ever since! Very inspiring stuff - The first class I took was a Plaster and Wax class with Stephanie Lee on Wednesday, October 1st . . . we poured plaster, carved it, colored it, and even cast it in molds. I had never realized what a flexible material it is - and once it's cured, it makes a great surface for encaustic painting.

Here's some plaster I poured, carved, and then colored with pastels during class:


It had cured by yesterday, so I layered some wax, and added a tiny hand cast in plaster . . .


The tiny hand was a gift from a fellow classmate (thank you, Beth!) . . . so, after I got home that night, I went out to the Goodwill and scrounged some dolls so that I could make my own tiny hand and arm molds!

At home, I've been doing some casting in PaperClay and layering it under encaustic . . . After taking the class with Stephanie, I've learned that the plaster is great because you can cast it a bit thicker than the PaperClay without worrying about cracking or shrinkage. The PaperClay is great because it's so easy, immediate, and flexible - and you can use the cracking that happens on larger pieces to great effect! I'll be teaching a class next month about casting in PaperClay and using it in acrylic painting . . . along with other texture effects. Here's the start of a piece that uses cast PaperClay under wax - and yes, those are cast from last weeks' scrounged dolls:

Gotta love the Goodwill! And the ideas that happen when you're in a room full of creative people!

4 comments:

Rowena said...

Love this and the process. Thanks for showing it.

BoneFolder said...

I've been experimenting with PaperClay and acrylics too on this mask project I'm working on. I'll have to try it with encaustics now that I know something about that.

I'm kind of curious about what's in your paperclay + acrylics class -- I was able to treat the clay as pretty much any other surface for acrylics, so.... is there some aspect I'm missing out on?

--Mike Jennings

gl. said...

ooo, nice! i never thought about making molds from doll arms...!

Jen Worden said...

nThat last piece is absolutely awesome. YUM!

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