My first experimentation with wax was at the beginning of the semester when I quickly test my 3 materials, at that moment I decided to melt crayons into a fish mold.
My experimentation continue with Micro Crystalline Wax: melting this material and mold it with my hands to achieve the desire form. I am constructing nature/female forms. This material was very fun to handle but using only the hands was not enough to spread the material evenly, the form is too thick looking similar to a male form. Carving was successful using appropriate carving tools.
The next step include dripping candle in a piece of wood, I enjoy working with that process but was not successful for the idea I had in mind.
I tried melting similar materials such as crayons, paraffin wax and wax warmers with help of a heat gun to see the final results.
* The crayons were really fun to melt and to see how the start mixing and giving more texture to the original candle drip.
* The wax warmers were the worst because they were to oily and start to separate the material making it to light and causing the wax to loss deepness. Also it makes the dripping from before get a horrible dirty look and contaminated all the wax.
* The paraffin wax worked good but was a slow process and you had to realize how much you want to melt it so it did not disappear in the mixture of wax.
The next step was to test if it was possible to mold these materials with my hands.
* Crayons, wax warmers and paraffin wax did not fulfill these requirements, they break after manipulate them a little bit.
My next step was to melt the paraffin wax in a pot
I wanted to keep working with my female/nature forms so I decided to used a remaining piece of my fabric bowls to test the wax on it!
It was too flat for me so my last step was to carve the female/nature forms into the wax to make the forms more notable. Is the first time I used carving tools, I enjoy the process but now I know I have to be very careful about how deep I have to carve to avoid losing the material with the technique.
For the upcoming two weeks I am going to focus on the last process, making this combination of form using fabric and wax. I am going to work larger not in size but in quantity, My goal is to fill a good amount of a wall with these forms using different textures and colors putting to the test the knowledge I got during these weeks.
I feel like you should study the anatomy of a vagina, gain some insight on the names and different components that make up a vagina that way you can better understand the form. Even if you wanted to still harness the abstraction of it it would be helpful to study the actual vagina and that way it would help when you are making an artist statement.
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job documenting your whole practice with wax, I think its great how many types of wax you used! To find which you like to work with the most. I think the wax dripped on to the wooded blocks were very interesting to look at I especially like the melted candle with the flame still lit looks very dramatic, love the picture. For your vaginas maybe you could sculpt them out of clay so you can get more detail easier make a mold and pour the wax into it. Also when I used to work with wax I used soldering iron and its really great because it heats up the wax while you work on it, also you can light a candle and use dentistry tools or clay tools and just heat them up to carve into the wax easier. But overall I think you did a great job exploring the material you seriously experimented with like all the waxes!
ReplyDeleteThat looks like a lot of fun and burning! Great experimentation and pretty nice result. If you are going to be making a lot of them, consider making a silicon mold of one, and then casting them in wax.
ReplyDeleteMariita! I'm really impressed of how much experimentation you did. The results look interesting and I can see that you learned the way every material works. Now you only need to focus on the material that you liked and felt better to work with for your next project. I agree with Yusimi and Kara that if you are willing to repeat shapes it is better to make a mold with silicone and cast it with wax. Looking forward to see what you do with this! :)
ReplyDeleteThank you ladies !!!!! Yusimy or Kara if you are willing to give me a crash course on mold making will be really appreciated :)
ReplyDeleteThanks again
Of course!!
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