Concentration Sculpture #3

The subject of this project is an octopus I created by using a new technique to me, called quilling. The setting is the ocean and shadow box I created behind it. This sculpture was made by sketching out a design for an octopus that I liked on a piece of paper. Then I began by cutting thin strips of paper and rolling them/squishing them into the long pointy shape seen in the sculpture. I filled in the drawing I had made with these pieces and after several weeks of this I finally got it to where I was happy, so as a finishing touch, I added a thin black border around the whole thing to bring it together. I then cut it off of the paper with a stencil knife and began creating a background by mixing and globbing thick acrylic paint onto the paper. I then created a shadow box out of wood, that was purposely too small, so that I could bend the paper and give the sculpture more dimension. I then positioned the octopus in the frame, and put it on a spacer so that it came out of the frame even more. I chose to create this sculpture because I had seen this process done on a card I saw and wanted to try replicating it. The elements and principles of design I used in this sculpture are color, form, texture, and pattern.

The composition rules and techniques I used in this sculpture are formal balance since the octopus and the frame are all centered fairly evenly, grouping since all of the pieces of paper are grouped to create the octopus, and framing since the shadow box frames the octopus. This project evolved because originally I was just going to leave the octopus on the white paper I had glued it to, but that would have been boring (and the paper got dirty), so I created the new background with acrylic paint. When the background dried, however, it began to curl; this was something I had not intended to do, but I ended up liking how it looked, so with the suggestion of Mrs. Medsker I created a shadow box to hold the background bent and to finish off the project.

The meaning behind this project is that it allowed me to try out a new technique I had seen and never done before, and while I'm with the result, I don't think I'll be doing this anytime soon because of how tedious it is. This project relates to my life because I enjoy the ocean and all of the sea life in it, which is captured in this sculpture, it also allowed me to use my wood working skills. I don't think that I would change anything with this project because overall, I am very pleased with how it turned out.