Within my narrative and identity project I was asked to produce a 3D portrait sculpture to interpret myself. I developed my idea by thinking about things that I like that I could incorporate to make facial features. I thought about things like makeup, fashion items and art supplies but none of those designs stood out to me. I started to consider my favourite artists to see if I could add anything to a design to make it unique. I settled on Rene Magritte and looked at how he covers the face with cloth in his “The Lovers” piece. I took inspiration from this and made it into a design for a sculpture using chicken wire, wood, fabric and cotton.

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I found that I changed my original design quite a lot throughout the project, I added metal wire to the chicken wire to make it stronger and more stable. I also changed the cotton hair as I cut pieces of cotton and started to stitch them in, but it looked lost, they all stuck together, and it didn’t look like hair at all. I unstitched the stitches and set out to think of another way of putting hair on my sculpture. I went to my craft cupboard and spotted my ribbon and twine string and thought it would be a perfect idea to make the hair out of.

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I also added similar features from my other design ideas; I thought that my wooden plinth looked plain and boring, so I looked around my house for old art supplies, makeup and jewellery to use to decorate the base. Upon doing this I also added a few craft bows and 3D stickers to give it effect. Another thing I changed was the face. I originally didn’t have anything set for what I was going to put on the face but thought that I’d end up painting the facial features on. When adding craft bits to my base I had the idea to use them for the face, so I laid them out to see how I could make them look like facial features and then glued them onto my sculpture.

Throughout the project I researched three artists Rene Magritte, Martin Debenham and Tess Felix. I produced an artist research page for them on my wix website with analyses of a piece of their work. Debenham uses metal wire to create portraits and other pieces of art work which linked in with the wire in my design. Felix uses recycled materials what she finds on the beach to produce piece of work which also links in with the base of my sculpture.

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I have developed a range of skills from creating my 3D portrait sculpture; I learnt how to handle chicken wire and metal rods by manoeuvring them into the shape that I wanted them using pliers. I improved some of the skills that I already had within woodwork and learnt how to make a rectangle hole through a solid piece of wood. I learnt that it's hard to curl cotton ribbon but how to make it work with hair straighteners. I also developed my composition skills when placing my recycles materials onto my plinth.

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When making my sculpture I bumped into a few complications along the way, along with the things I mentioned in my mid-point evaluation I also ran out of glue sticks for my hot glue gun. Everywhere in my home town was sold out and I couldn’t wait for an online order to be delivered so I bought some silicone glue in a rush to get it finished. Once I stuck my first piece of material down I suddenly noticed that the glue took 30 minutes to become touch dry and 24 hours to dry completely. It was a struggle, but I made it work. Another problem I came across was curling the ribbon I stuck to the head for hair. I initially wasn’t planning on curling it, so it was already stuck down but I thought the hair would look fuller if it was curled. I tried to curl them with hair straighteners as it was cotton, but it proved a struggle. It took me around 2 hours to curl the ribbons in the end to the best I could. I later found that I should have wrapped them round pencils before sticking them down and put them in the oven for a little while and the curls would have been complete.

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I think that my portrait sculpture is successful as it shows my personality a lot. It shows that I like crafting as well as some of my hobbies like makeup and art. My portrait displays how creative I am, and I think that it portrays me as a person. Although the materials on the plinth look quite messy and all over the place, it’s organised to fit into places and composed to look the way that it does, and I think that symbolises some of the factors about my personality.

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Although I changed a lot already I still think there is room for improvement. If I could do anything differently it would be the original head shape and size. I think that if I had more time I would have found a way to dismantle the head and made it smaller. I would have done this by cutting some of the wire out and re designing the face as I think it ruins the piece. In future pieces I would like to space my time out a lot better so that I have the time to make any improvements that I want to make. Other than the head being too big I’m happy with the turn out and I think it portrays me well.