it's about time: soap carving.

"Carve two forms from life (a small, plastic animal) using soap as your medium. Observe and depict proportions.  Apply concepts of time to one of your carvings so that the form no longer represents your chosen animal.  Use the same animal for both forms."

For this project, we were to carve two animals using soap... At first I thought it would be fun: something new. I was so wrong... it was beyond hard and very challenging. For me, I like to look at one small detail and work with that, and then go to another area. This project challenged me because I couldn't look at just one area, I had to look at the whole form before carving.

the start to my first carving

when the polar bear began to take shape

start to my second bear

both polar bears side by side

both polar bears together

now the fun part: destroying one of my soap carvings!!

started dripping water on the bear

the water gave it an awesome texture, so i froze the bear to see what would happen
(and because polar bears live in the arctic)

i started to cut him in half...

one chunk i dug a hole into and stuffed it with cotton, and dripped hot red wax on it.
(i used cotton for the polar bears fur, and red wax because red is danger, and polar bears an endangered.)

showing both of the halves

started burning the other half, i liked the black smooth texture it gave

i stuck a bunch of pins into it, taking bit apart and moving it around and then used rubber bands.
(i wanted the rubber bands because polar bears eat seals, and seals are rubbery)

i added black ink to the wax and cotton ball sculpture because polar bears have black skin, and i like how it didn't exactly stick to the wax/soap

 

kafka's metamorphosis response.

Although I read this story all through high school, this time I was reading it for a different reason: A visual reason.

Whenever I would picture Gregor, I always pictured a huge, gross beetle/cockroach. Sometime I would go back and forth on this notion because at times he seems very small, but also very large. I believe Gregor is a very sad man, who was pushed around and walked on his whole life, until eventually the natural state of his life evolved into him morphing into a bug. His family doesn’t notice the change because they have always seen him as a bug; a minuscule, meaningless bug. His family doesn’t appreciate him, and that is sad. I think that it is depressing that even though he has transformed into this large bug, all he worries about is getting to work.

At the end of the story, I believe is the saddest part: His father pushes him into the room, and slams the door, as if to say they are done with him. This whole story is depressing and heartbreaking because Gregor never asked to be turned into a bug.

elements and principles in 3d form.

scale.

texture.

focal point.

repetition.