VISUAL ARTS

YEAR 10 FIGURATIVE SCULPTURE EXPLORATIONS

The beginning of our Year 10 sculpture class has been focussed on the human figure as our central theme for our first two projects. With an emphasis on students exploring concepts meaningful to them, we reflected on questions such as what can the body communicate through body language? How can the body be a way to express identity? 

In the midst of the two projects, we squeezed in a visit to the NGV Triennial which you can read about in the Thistle. Our artistic explorations in sculpture class will be explained through the voices of the lovely Katya and Iliana. 

Miss Simpson

Sculpture Teacher 

During our first project in Year 10 sculpture, we created wire sculptures. The objective of this project was to create a metal wire sculpture depicting a 'figure in action' which would then provide the viewer with a sense of the feeling portrayed by the figure. We started out simply in our books with the development of our designs as we searched up images and videos of people transitioning through a series of poses and then drew them out based on our new figure proportion skills that we developed. In order to create the sculpture, we chose a pose that expressed an emotion or feeling that we wanted to portray. We then bent and twisted the wire according to the shapes and curves of the human body, to then manipulate it into the pose we desired it to be in. 

After finishing the actual sculpture, we attached it to a wooden plinth and were then given the option to spray paint our design to furthermore express our chosen feeling. This project was an extremely enjoyable experience which helped us understand the proportions of figures and different sculpting techniques. This project was overall really fun as we had never been given an opportunity in school before to do wire sculptures.

Katya Blutman Year 10 

For the second project of the term, we had to make a tattoo-inspired arm casting. During this project, we explored our individual identity by using significant events or moments from our past, present, and future, which will be represented as the tattoos that will be on our finished sculpture. We were also given the freedom to choose the body part we wished to cast and the position of the sculpture. 

Casting our arms and faces was a completely new and interesting experience, in which we had to coat the area of skin we wanted to cast with a layer of vaseline, then apply three layers of plaster all over the desired area. This process took a while to complete, as we had to go back and cast our arm in two sections to make sure that we would be able to take off the cast from our arm without damaging it. We will then fill our cast with plaster of paris to create a smooth surface to paint the tattoos on. 

We will conclude the project by either putting the finished sculpture on a plinth and hanging it on the wall or hanging it from the ceiling. 

Ilyana Brough Year 10