War & Peace

This project was titled War & Peace. We were instructed to create a device that implemented war or peace. However, we were not supposed to actually draw the object, instead draw the plans for the object. Like a blueprint. We we also limited to a certain amount of materials, basically ones that would've been used in the time of DaVinci. Our goal was to make this piece of art look very old. To get the process rolling the whole class started out by tea staining paper. By soaking our paper in tea/coffee for a few minutes at a time this created a weathered effect giving it the appearance of it being old. I struggled a little bit coming up with what device I wanted to create. I knew I wanted to create a device of war, but I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do. I am pretty into science fiction and weird creepy stuff so making a device of war sounded right. I recently just finished the Game of Thrones series so my mind kept going back to dragons and weird magic. At first I contemplated making the blueprint of a dragon, but felt that wasn't original enough. I then started thinking about how to turn everyday people into dragon-like creature. At some point I came up with a dragon mask concept. Essentially it is a mask that you can strap onto the face of a human, and it allows you to breathe fire and chomp on people. I got really into the details of the design aspect of my creation, making little notes as I went along. I even got as nerdy as to print out a protractor to measure the angle of how far the jaws of the mask open because I thought that would be a cool aspect to include. Some of my other notes include: how long the tongue extends, the measurements and dimensions of the skull model, how many teeth the mask includes etc. In fig. 4 I have a closeup of the tongue, and the tongue texture is actually made up of the material that is on the sides of match boxes. Thus, when the teeth scrape against the tongue, it creates friction as a match would, allowing the wearer of the mask to breathe fire. The first step I did to creating this piece was drawing everything out in pencil. From there I went in with india ink and inked in spots where I wanted to create depth and shadow. I was not too concerned about leaving my pencil marks visible, because after all this was supposed to look like sketches from a book and not picture perfect. After letting the ink dry I went in with a charcoal pencil to darken some areas and so add more contrast. My last step was going back into my paper and rubbing coffee and very watered down ink all over it to smear some of my images / words. I tried to write out my notes in india ink but I was struggling with writing in cursive with a paint brush. For this reason I decided to use a black ink pen. In critique I was made aware that the black of my pen looks a little to dark and new, so I would need to water that down a little and maybe go over the whole thing with some sandpaper. I also know that my design was not as evenly spaced out as some others were and to others might seem like there is too much going on, on one page. However, in my own sketch books I personally like to cram a lot of sketches and notes into one page, because I am not a huge fan of blank space. I like to make use of all of the paper given to me. Especially when it's just in my sketchbook. If I had to go back and rework, this piece I think I would maybe try to add some more stain on my paper because I really enjoyed the look of dark paper from other students projects. I would also probably try to rough it up a little more and add some more notes. 

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