Priley Riley, "I only have one...", 30th May 2014

I have been helping to set up the degree show for students in their final year at university this week and as such I have not had time to focus on my own work. Walking home from this today, however, I began thinking about how grateful I am for different things in my life, especially for the things that I only have one of (e.g. one mum) as having only one makes it all the more valuable and special. This thought has inspired me to use one of the sketchbooks that I made to do a project called “I only have one…” where I draw the single things that I am grateful for. I started off with the ink drawing and watercolour painting “I only have one heart” as I am grateful for the one heart keeping me alive and the subject of the heart leads on well from my last work.

Priley Riley, The heart (continued), 21st- 25th May 2014

Since my last post I have been thinking about incorporating text into my work on the heart. I started off doing quick watercolour paintings of the heart from memory and I wondered if I could paint the heart using the word heart itself, shown in the top photo. I painted different words in the shape of a heart but I found that the word heart worked best as the outside shape looked most like that of a heart and I liked how the diagonal part of the letter ‘A’ looked like the coronary blood vessels that go across the heart. I decided to develop this in my next piece by painting a hand around the heart with a contrasting green background, shown in the second photo. I then thought about adding writing that is more meaningful, and so I thought about how the image of the heart typically represents love. I sewed the word love over work on the heart, such as the piece shown in the third photo, which I also used drawing ink and watercolour paint for. I then thought back to the dissected hearts and how this image could represent the heart being broken, which inspired me to do the piece shown in the final photo. I kept the art fairly simple to emphasize the writing.

Priley Riley, The heart, 16th- 21st May 2014

I finished my first year at university last Friday (the 16^th), and since then I have been studying lamb hearts as I found the lamb heart an interesting addition to the ice sculpture I made. I have done a variety of work on the heart on A5 paper and have shown a few of the more interesting or successful bits above. I started off with an ink drawing (top photo), I then did prints using the heart, followed by painting the heart using real blood from it (second photo), painting a background using blood and painting a heart over this in acrylic paint (third photo), painting a blood background and doing an ink drawing over this, researching the different parts of the heart and drawing & labelling the outside of it using ink (fourth photo), and dissecting the heart for a labelled ink drawing of its inside (bottom photo). Some were done from life and others from photos that I took. I had 3 different lamb hearts to work from and I studied the front and back of them so that the hearts don’t all look the same in my work.

Priley Riley, Ice sculpture, 14th- 15th May 2014

At around 4pm yesterday I put the plastic mould that I made, containing water and a real lamb’s heart, into the freezer. I took the ice sculpture out of the freezer at the same time today, so that it had 24 hours to freeze, and above are photos showing the result. The first three photos were taken as soon as the ice sculpture was taken out of the freezer and plastic mould, and the last photo was taken one and a half hours later to show how it had become whiter/ more opaque with time. I am very happy with how the sculpture turned out- the heart could be seen clearly, I was happy with the amount of detail that it started off with, and the parts that were more opaque almost looked like a skeleton! I am continuing to take regular photos of the ice sculpture to show its deterioration, but my favourite photos were taken prior to 6pm.

Priley Riley, Preparing for and making a plastic mould for my ice sculpture, 8th- 13th May 2014

I finished preparing my cast and the MDF board for the cast to go onto today- this stage is shown in the photo above. I then put the board and cast into a vacuum forming machine, which heats up a plastic sheet until it is soft. The plastic is then sucked around the cast, maintaining the cast’s shape, and the two are then separated. Although it was difficult to separate them, I was very happy that when they did separate both the cast and plastic mould were undamaged. Tomorrow I will fill the plastic mould (shown below) with water and place a real lamb’s heart inside, and this will be left in a freezer overnight. Once frozen, I will separate the plastic mould from the ice sculpture.

Priley Riley, Hand casts and an update on the chest cast, 7th May 2014

I did two more hand casts today- the one on the right of the photo turned out very well, whereas I didn’t get the result I was hoping for with the cast on the bottom left. This is because the knuckle area is slightly deformed, which was caused by the suction from me pulling my hand out of the wax mould. The cast at the top was made on the 21^st of March but I think the hand casts look nice as a group which is why I photographed them together.

My chest cast is progressing well. I have done a lot of work on it today and last Friday so that it can be put into a vacuum forming machine, which will produce a plastic mould of the chest cast. I will then be able to use this plastic mould to make the ice sculpture. The cast requires a lot of preparation before it can go in the machine; the cast must sit perfectly flat, the sides must be blocked in with plaster that is angled slightly so the base is wider, small holes must be drilled into the cast, any sharp edges must be shaven down, etc. All of these adjustments to the cast need to be made so that the plastic mould can be produced, be undamaged, and be separated from the cast without problems.

Priley Riley, Oil pastel drawing of a bearded dragon 6, 6th May 2014

For my last drawing I used colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel. I wanted to try the opposite to this in the oil pastel drawing above by choosing two complementary colours (opposites on the colour wheel) to use, which is why I chose green and red for this piece.

Priley Riley, Oil pastel drawing of a bearded dragon 5, 5th May 2014

I used red, orange and yellow oil pastels for the drawing above. I did this to contrast these warm colours with my previous drawing which used cool shades of blue.

Priley Riley, Oil pastel drawing of a bearded dragon 4, 5th May 2014

I wanted to try something different so I decided to do an oil pastel drawing using different shades of just one colour. I chose blue because it’s considered a masculine colour so it represents how Zeus was my boy.