Well, it’s been a bit longer than a week or two since I last posted, but I didn’t anticipate having a trapped nerve in my neck which made concentrated work, especially on the computer, a bit painful. However, better now and I’ve at last finished Chapter 2.
Interpreting spiral drawings
Sian suggested that I might try interpreting the fossil ammonite on a bigger scale, so I tried that.
3.2.1 the original picture of the fossil
(Above) 3.2.2, 3.2.3 and 3.2.4 three views of my interpretation of the fossil. I cut out the shape from blue card, marked it into sections and cut out shapes from each section. I then backed it with a contrasting paper in which I also cut out shapes. When trying to see what colour of background was best, I decided that it was best to leave the smaller holes empty. When put up on a window, I thought the views through the little holes were interesting. To mark the outside of the spiral shape, I coloured kitchen paper with acrylic paint and then cut it into strips and twisted them into a spiral cord, using pva to prevent it unwinding. I used a glue gun with a dark blue sparkly gluestick to secure the cord to the card. (I’m not very neat with glue and I thought any clumsy blobs of glue would be decorative and fit the colour scheme!)
3.2.5 My original sketchbook page with pictures of DNA double helix
3.2.6 a group of pictures with different views of my 3D interpretation of the DNA double helix
I made a twisted cord from painted kitchen towel as described above. I cut four strips of stiff paper (about 1cm wide) and backed them with double sided sticky tape. I laid two down sticky side up, then cut short lengths of the paper cord and stuck them down before sticking the remaining strips on top to sandwich the ends of the paper cord. I then twisted the whole helix before gluing it down onto a backing paper.
3.2.7 a two dimensional interpretation of the DNA drawing
3.2.8 a simpler 3D interpretation of the DNA
3.2.9 a group of pictures of the 3D spirals
I tried to use a variety of shapes, sizes and weights for this. I painted all the paper and card first with different colours on each side. I painted the edges of some of the spirals with copper metallic acrylic paint. Most of the spirals are constructed from corrugated card, but some are cartridge paper and some tracing paper. This was fun!
Digital Spirals
3.2.10 a group of Photoshop digital drawings
First I tried some warm up exercises, drawing spirals using Photoshop. I was able to use a variety of brushes to obtain some interesting effects.
Next I discovered a couple of apps which enabled one to draw spiral shapes, Facebook have such an app:
3.2.11 two spiral drawings made with the Facebook app
McDonalds also had a SpinArt app for a short time:
3.2.12 two spiral drawings with the McDonalds spin art app
Finally, I used a filter in Photoshop (Distort, Twirl) to distort existing images to give a spiral effect.
3.2.13 a group of photographs distorted by the Photoshop filter
While typing this, I just remembered that Sian had asked me to name the different types of spirals that I have portrayed. Sorry I forgot and I must post this before I cook supper and dash out to an AGM tonight. Will add the names later.
