Concentration #1

The concentration that I chose was bees and flowers. The first project I started was a clay bear with sgraffito designs of bees, flowers, and honeycomb patterns. Since it takes a long time to make something out of clay I had to start another project so I had something to turn in when concentration #1 was due. I had already sketched some other designs for my concentration and I chose to make a bee with flower petals for wings. I the bee out of sculpey and then painted on it with acrylic. I used black sculpey for the body of the bee, yellow for the stripes, and pink for the wings. The legs and the antennae have wire in them to help them keep their shape. I also used wire to hold the three main parts of the body together. I used sculpey gloss glaze on the eyes and the wings to make them shiny. When the sculpey was cooking some of the legs fell over and I had to use hot glue to glue them on later. I made the wings separately and glue them on after everything was cooked.

The elements of art that I used in this sculpture are line, shape, texture, value and color. I used line in the yellow stripes on the bee, and shape helped me make the body of the bee out of three basic shapes. I painted little yellow lines on part of the bee to add texture because bees are kind of fuzzy. I used value and color in the wings because pink flower petals usually fade from dark pink to light pink. The principles of design that I used are balance, contrast, and emphasis. I used balance because the wings and the body of the bee are pretty symmetrical. The legs are not symmetrical because the position of them changed while the sculpey was baking. There is contrast between the black and yellow on the bee. I used emphasis in the wings because they are very bright and pink and I put sculpey gloss glaze on them.

Something that I would like to change about this sculpture it how far forward it's leaning. I think if I made the legs stronger they would hold the bee up better and stop it from leaning forward so much.