17th of October

Hey guys thought it was time to check in and get everyone up to date. Decided to do a fairly long post tonight as I am stranded in a hotel room till Sunday evening.

Well after my tutorail with Ambrose got me on track and to a project I have really jumped into this with both feet. Below I am going to put up the expermenting I have been doing with plastcine but more on that later. One bit of research I have been very much enjoying is an idea Ambrose had, go through all my forging books looking for squished steel and when i find it listing whether i think its too far done or not. I have done about 4 books now and got quite alot of pictures i like and a fair few that i think is a bit over done, its this contrast between the two i need to set out now before we start.

I will endavour to print this pictures from the books off to put up in my space, I have only been there a few times but everytime I notice how empty it is looking next to everyone elses. And im fairly sure by now Del would like to see something I am doing.

About the expermenting these are the shapes i made up on tuesday morning, there was a lot of different shapes like square, circle, hexagon section. I placed all of them in the fridge over night so that they would toughen up, doing this i feel the plasticine reacts as close as I am going to get to steel.

Once i brought them out, one by one i was either hammering them down to compress or forcing steel bar into them to make ridges. There are some i found successful and others didnt work for me. I will talk about a few that stood out to me.

This was one of the largest ones i did. It was a circle to start with but as soon as i started to apply the pressure it began to warp in the best way. One side shot out while the other crumpled in on itself. The picture directly above shows my faveriote piece of this one, the side that crumples in and started to fold on itself. I think this one has been worked just enough, i could have gone further but i would have ruined it.

This is an example of one that was worked too far. As i was pushing the steel in there was a really nice point when it was started to compress down and for some reason i kept going until this point. Its split on the sides and the other half of it is left almost untouched. When i get to the steel this is what i want to avoid making, i think it looks over worked and frankly shit in my mind.

This is one where i worked the bar in and i believe it worked. I didnt go too far with it and luckily pulled away when i thought it was right. Why i like this one is the depression on one side is splitting or ripping away from the center. There is something to how the depression folds over the rest of plasticine which really interests me, I am looking to do more of this and look more into what i like about it.

The rest of the pictures are other ones that i did. I will be doing another set when i get back into my house over the weekend, guess il go back to the disseration till then.