Priley Riley, Research and experiments for my ice sculpture, Ongoing since the 8th of March 2014

I have been researching and experimenting with ice as I intend on making an ice sculpture. My ice sculpture will be of the human chest and will have a real lamb heart frozen inside, and so it is important that the ice is transparent for the heart to be seen. 

 

For my first experiment I left the water to freeze in a container for 2 days, and the result was an opaque block of ice. I wondered if reducing the amount of freezing time would increase the chances of it being transparent so for my second experiment I reduced this time to just 5 and a half hours. When I carefully tipped the ice out of the container, I was left with was a very fragile casing of ice as there were a couple of holes on the outside of the ice and the water inside had not frozen, so had escaped out of these holes. The photo below is from my second experiment, where the heart could clearly be seen though the fragile casing:

 

Although it was fragile I considered this result a success because the ice could be seen through very clearly. Since then I have continued my experiments to find the perfect freezing time, between the times given to my first and second experiments, to achieve transparent ice that is not so fragile. The most successful experiment so far, shown below, was given 11 hours to freeze. The heart is clear and the ice casing is much thicker.

Priley Riley, Bookbinding, 13th- 14th March 2014

I have spent the past two days binding paper that I made on the 5^th of March into a sketchbook. Because I have done Japanese bookbinding before I decided to try a different method to make this sketchbook, called cut binding. Cut binding involves the hinge of the book being both sewn and glued, making this type of bind very strong. For this sketchbook I kept the edges of the paper as they dried but in future I might try cutting them with a paper guillotine for a different, clean-cut, result. When I did the papermaking I added gold coloured glitter to the pulp so I chose the gold card on the inside of the cover to match the glittery paper.

Priley Riley, Animation, 12th March 2014

I did animation at university today, which is not something that I had tried before. One of the tasks set was to use Maya software to animate two objects so that they collide with each other. I wanted the objects to have a different state of matter to make the collision more interesting, so I chose to have a liquid collide with and engulf a solid object. I designed a table for my solid object and originally had a layer of lava collide with this. Although I liked the collision, I wanted the animation to look more amusing and unusual so I kept all of the lava’s properties except for the colour, and changed the colours so that the lava looks like cheese!

Priley Riley, Considering how to create an ice sculpture from a mould

Over the next few weeks I will be posting less on my Blog as I will be researching, experimenting and eventually producing a completed ice sculpture. My tutor said that in his 34 years working for the university no one has ever tried making an ice sculpture from a mould, but in theory it could work. I want the ice sculpture to be of the figure as I have been working on portraiture this semester, and to get a mould of the figure I will cast part of a volunteer’s body. The process will require a considerable amount of research as the only way that I could make a mould would be to use fibreglass- any other material would crack the mould as the ice froze and expanded inside it. I also want my finished ice sculpture to be clear and to contain an object. For this reason I am interested in casting the chest area, making a fibreglass mould from this, and using the mould to cast an ice sculpture with a heart frozen inside- either a real animal heart or one that I could make. Before I do this however, I will need to experiment with freezing water to see how clear it is; if air bubbles form the heart would not be seen. I will also need to consider other questions such as how I could freeze the heart exactly where I wanted it.

Priley Riley, Papermaking, 5th March 2014

This is the paper that I made on the 5^th of March. There are 34 sheets of paper in total. I intend on using 30 of the sheets, which are roughly 8 x 8 inches in size, to bind into a book.

Priley Riley, Papermaking, 28th February 2014

On the 28^th of February 2014 I did papermaking for the first time. The paper is roughly A5 size. I used a template to make my paper heart shaped, for a more interesting outcome, and I also added red dye to some of the pulp in order to make red hearts as well as a white one. I had to leave the paper to dry for a few days in between blankets so today was my first opportunity to take them out and photograph the paper for my blog. The way the paper dried has meant that the edges are not very clean-cut; I had considered cutting them into perfect heart shapes but decided against it because I prefer the idea of the paper looking more natural.

Priley Riley, Watercolour painting of family members, 28th of February and 1st of March 2014

This painting depicts my brother, dad and sister.