Reaching a Plateau –

Up to know I feel quite lucky because I’ve generally quite like most of my experiments, but for some reason this one made me really recoil!  I hate everything about it – even a dabble with Ai couldn’t convince me otherwise.  I don’t think I can remember a time that I’ve been so disappointed in anything that I’ve done before. I also need to stay away from Pinterest – the more beautiful artwork I see the more self critical I become and it’s not helpful.   I feel now is the time I need to take a step back.  I need to reflect on what I have done so far and consider what my next steps might be.  As per my outline plan ideally I should be doing more research right now and I tend to agree.

Over the weekend I decided to try my hand at paper sculpture.  It’s something that I’m incredibly interested in, but I’ve never really had time to explore it in any meaningful way.  Below is my journey into this medium and some of the results from it.  I just can’t get excited about it at all.  However, I always like to hang onto anything I create because ‘just in case’ and  ‘you never know’ (two favourite phrases of mine) may just arise.

My Failed Journey into Paper Sculpture

Below are some images of what I did and some of the final outcomes.  The paper sculpture was shot in very strong sunshine which gave the most beautiful natural light.  I deliberately chose this as my light source because I felt that the lights and darks created by the layers of paper were very interesting.  I have made these kind of paper sculptures before but I have never tried to cut holes into them, so this part of the process was an unknown for me.

The Process

The Next Steps

Now that I had cut my paper the next step was to assemble it into some form of paper sculpture ready to be photographed.  Below is a video of the process>

A Contact Sheet of Images

Image Gallery

Below are some of the best images from the shoot.  Although they were interesting, I really wasn’t happy with them at all.  I have made much better sculptures in the past.  However even with the beautiful sunshine lighting this sculpture I felt it wasn’t particularly appealing.

Experimentation

My first experiment was to produce a layered version of the image below.  The photographs had revealed some interesting tones and I wandered if there was a way to capitalise on this?

The Kaleidoscope Effect

Out of everything that I produced over the weekend I think that the kaleidoscope experiments were the most successful.  I took the layered image directly above and I fed it into an app called ‘KaleidaCam.’    Below are some of the results.

Conclusion

Initially I was very disappointed with both my paper sculpture and my photography.  However I think that I did manage to ‘turn it around’ up to a point.  I felt that the layered experiment was interesting but that the kaleidoscope experiments were by far the best.  The unusual tones created by the sunshine lighting up the sculpture were probably the most successful part of the project.  I was not happy with my photography.  However, I do think that further experimentation with paper sculpture could prove worthwhile particularly if I explore more regular and smaller cutout shapes.