Title: Woman Selling Herring
Artist: Godfried Schalcken Date Created: 1675/1680 Size: 19 cm (height) x 15.5 cm (width) Medium: Oil On Panel
0 Comments
My piece is an arrangement of s'more ingredients and sprinkles. For this project I was asked to take a variety of objects and arrange them, modify them, an organize them to create a pattern or visual effect. To do this, I decided to use a chocolate bar as framework, and have other objects be arranged inside of the chocolate bar. I cut out squares inside of the individual chocolate pieces, doing my best to keep the remaining chocolate intact. I then put the cut chocolate on top of a graham cracker so that the cracker was visible through the squares I cut out. I then cut some marshmallows down in size, and mixed some different colored sprinkles in a cup. I then filled some of the holes in the chocolate bar with marshmallows and some with sprinkles. This created diagonal rows in the chocolate, one filled with sprinkles, one filled with marshmallows, and one filled with nothing to show the graham cracker below. In the corner box of my chocolate frame, I took away part of the frame and had the sprinkles inside spill out of the frame onto the plate to add some movement to my piece.
In my piece there is a lot of texture. I used many different materials, each with different tactile and visual textures. The chocolate was the material I used most since it acted as a frame for the other materials, and it has a smooth texture. Compared to the other materials I used, the chocolate reflected the most light, making it look silky and sheen. The sprinkles added a lot of texture to my piece as well, since the squares with them are filled with lots of individual crystals of sugar. This added some sharpness to my piece and also added a grainy texture. The marshmallows also contributed to the texture of the piece because I had to cut them into smaller pieces, and when pushing them into the squares in the chocolate, I created many creases and folds in the skin of the marshmallow. Pattern plays an important part in my piece because it is what mainly makes my piece interesting. Without having a pattern, my piece would look like a random assembly of different foods. I created a pattern within my arrangement by filling the separate diagonal rows in my chocolate frame with the same material, creating a row of sprinkles, a row of graham crackers, a row of marshmallows, another row of sprinkles, and a final row of marshmallows again. I was inspired to this by seeing photos of Adam Hillman's work. I particularly liked his photos where he arranged a bunch of objects and peels them in specific ways to create boxes or triangles of colors surrounded by a bunch of peeled or raw materials. This is how I got my idea for using chocolate as a frame to create boxes of different materials surrounded by a homogeneous frame. Because I have s'more ingredients in my house already, I decided to use those materials and added sprinkles to add my own touch to the arrangement. I find the design of my piece successful. I would have considered the execution of my piece successful, but cutting chocolate cleanly while keeping it intact was hard and I ended up breaking pieces in the first column of chocolate pieces so bad I had to cut the column off completely. I ended up with some cracks in my final frame and had a fair amount of chocolate crumbs on the frame I could not get out, making my final piece slightly more messy than I would have liked. However, I think the design I came up with looked very similar to how I wanted, and I think I achieved the effect I was looking for so I consider the design successful. From this assignment I learned that considering the properties of the materials you plan on using is important. I did not consider the properties of chocolate at room temperature when I started my project, resulting in many cracks and areas where the chocolate melted to my touch. If I had thought about the properties and characteristics of the materials before I used them I might have started my project at a different temperature or I might have used different materials that are more suited to my design. |
AuthorI started taking Art seriously in Eighth Grade when I took a Character Design Class. Archives
May 2020
Categories |