This week, I want to talk about some fun sculpture news as well as update on my progress on the heron. I’ll also share an animatic for an upcoming animation.

After the break, I wasn’t feeling super jazzed to continue the heron. I felt like I was hitting a bit of a roadblock on the project. Cutting glass is difficult and takes practice. I kept messing up, so I just needed to take some time away.

I ended up going on a little field trip this week to see a local sculpture artist, Scott Nichols. I found out it was happening day-of, but I was curious, so I came and took a look. His talk really resonated with me. He spoke of his realization that sculpture is something he is capable of and enjoys doing. He talked about teaching himself electrical wiring and welding. This inspired me to continue work on my own sculpture project that I’ve been teaching myself.

Once I returned, I felt a renewed vigor to continue trying to cut glass. That day I cut eleven pieces for my project, which is much more than the zero I had before. I expect that the process will get faster the more I practice.

I also could not have gotten that far without guidance. Tom from the woodshop area came and gave me some essential advice. He shockingly revealed that he has been doing stained glass work for many years. He told me how he usually goes about cutting and which tools he uses. His advice was invaluable and he also let me borrow a few tools that were extremely helpful. He suggested I get a grease pencil so that I don’t have to glue patterns on. It will also help so that I can break the glass underwater. From what I’ve gathered, it will help control my breaks and also stop shards of glass from going everywhere when I’m nipping off areas.

I’m excited to finally feel like I’m making progress. I really want this to be done by the senior show. I think it’ll make for a really fun piece.

Because of the whole field trip story, I’ll wait to update on my other art until the next installment of the blog. There’ll be a lot to show I’m sure. In the meantime, here’s an animatic of the animation I’ve been working on lately:

My cat in real life decided to stick her head in a bag and run around chaotically, so I made this animation. The assignment was to create an animation in the UPA style (modernist, geometric). I’ve been working on backgrounds and today I’ll start on making the cat not look like a bunch of scribbles. I’m excited to see how it turns out, but I fear I’m in way over my head.

That’s all for now though! Stay tuned to see how I do 🙂

More to come!