Nature Art Challenge

Look who's been looting graveyards for fallen tree bark and other random natural objects for collage/installations?! That's right, it's me. I was given a challenge by my professor of my latest course, Beyond the Pages at DKDS. It's focusing on telling stories by creating illustrations in 3D.

So, we as a class had to each create 2 pieces as part of a 3 part process. First, we needed to collect our natural (not manmade) objects, then photograph them. Ok, done. Then take those objects and make something, without any man made tools (i.e. tape, glue etc...). Right-o, now what? Then make something that combines the natural objects and manmade objects to form a manmade/natural collaboration(even though we as human beings are apart of nature....that's another story).

Anyway, below you'll find what I came up with- oh yea, I almost forgot to mention an important fact: we needed to follow a theme. The theme was mainly a collection of words like, Black Ocean, Underground, Midnight, Nocturnal and Darkness. There it is! 

Disclaimer: This project still needs some final composition pictures, in water! Stay tuned-they'll be posted soon.

This piece was the totally natural objects....

Feathers, beet root juice I put through a juicer and raw wool (+honey as an adhesive)

This one was the nature + manmade objects. Final elements in composition.

In process shot of natural elements.

Chestnut detail.

In process shot of overall composition.

Detailed shot of the hand dyed egg in beet juice.

Playing with nature....

Whittled live branches dipped in beet juice. 

Beet root juice and a whittled feather = quill!

Stop Motion Animation

Alright, internetters, I'm on a roll what can I say? Here are some pictures and finished product of a piece I finished a few months back.

Yes, I am slow to post, but better late than never is the story of my life (ask anyone that knows me)! Back to the good stuff, I took a course at school DKDS, with the formal title Self-formulated Project within a Shared Framework. Basically, I could make up my own project, do it, and present it, then defend my choices to my professors when they saw the finished product. Right away I knew I wanted to try my hand at creating my own stop motion armature. What is that, you ask? Check it out here. I hit up the University of youtube A.S.A.P. and after hours of fiddling around "learning", I set to work. Below you can follow my process in chronological order to the big finish with a video of the final product. Enjoy the fruits of my labor as I took my first crack at creating armature from scratch, building a puppet, dressing said puppet and trying to make her walk!

How's my hair?

                 Process Process Process

Getting started with pow-pow-power tools and heavy wire. 

Playing God.

Let there be skinny jeans and braided hair!

Sanding the bottoms of her shoes because a girl's gotta be able to stand on her own two feet.
Am I right, ladies?

Playing around with hairstyles and the new rig!

Girlfriend is camera ready, let's get this party started! 

Hard at work (don't mess it up don't mess it up don't mess it up)

Recording in the studio!