Exoskeleton

We had a "large" painting assignment for Adv. Painting and I had always wanted to paint on a dress form. Luckily for me, Darshana (another painter) had a dress form she was trying to find a home for. This fits in with the rest of the Body Modification series and is supposed to evoke the idea of a wrought iron and (frosted) glass exoskeleton to encase organs. I abstracted the view of the organs themselves because it wouldn't be especially appealing to see kidneys and mammary glands but I did use the metal to mirror the muscles and skeleton of the body. In the front there is the ribcage, sternum, abs, etc. and in the back: spine, pelvis, and shoulder blades. I'm tempted to go back in with 3 dimensional aspects but for the assignment I kept it painted only.
I think the hardest part of this was putting the gesso on. There was this fuzzy felt, jersey fabric covering the adjustable plastic form so I had to get past that in order to get a relatively smooth surface. This was easier said than done. Each layer took forever to dry and started to crack in places. Sanding it was also a pain and I'm fairly certain I have a nice cakey layer of gesso on the inside of my lungs now ^.^;;. Oh well. Stapling the skirt on the bottom wasn't especially easy but I think it gives the overall piece a nice finished look and ties it back in to the sheath dresses from the other paintings in the series.

This was on display with the rest of my class's response to the assignment at the Colburn Gallery at Williams Hall.


In other news, the majority of construction is now done. Unfortunately, tumblr has been down for the past few days which has been a hindrance but I'm pretty pleased with my results. Please check them out! ^.^

New stuff ftw

Sooo for my Adv. Painting course we have to do a large painting. I was going to paint a canvas dress form which, after shipping would've cost close to $100. Ouch. I mentioned this in class and this wicked cool girl mentioned she just happened to have one she was trying to find a good home for. She also really likes the style of the Body Mod series, which is what this "canvas" is going to go along with. How swell is that!? The only difficult part of this scenario is that it is an adjustable dress form in my measurement range (WANT!) but I had to keep the goal in mind. I'm currently mid-gesso on that as I type. Pics to come.

I also (finally) replaced my tablet. I had an Wacom Intuos 3 but being stored in a damp basement was the death of it (I'm an idiot, I know) so I (after over a year of being tablet-less) went out and got the Wacom Bamboo Pen. It is lower on the Wacom totem pole but all things considered, I'm wicked happy with it. I joined Sumo Paint and doodled this Fullmetal Alchemist fanart in about 30 min.