lazer cutting:)

I attended a workshop in lazer cutting, basically got shown how to use the equipment and got to have a little go ourselves,

This is the mini sculpture that i made, which fitted in with the topic well as its just one shape repeated.. i managed to make it into a sort of flower shape as well... bonus :)

Richard Sweeney workshop 2&3.

In the Second and Third workshop we had with Richard Sweeney we moved on from a small A5 sized piece of paper and became a bit more adventurous with the paper. 
The second workshop was all about creating emphasis and texture on the paper. Unlike the first workshop we were allowed to use adhesive to join the edges of the paper together this time.
Here are some pictures of the pieces produced in the workshop.

The third workshop was all about using shapes with tabs on to create a different kind of  structure. 

Flowers.

After visiting the winter gardens in sheffield and looking at the forms in which the flowers create i was inspired enough to get crackin' with my final 3D piece. 

These are some pictures of flowers which i took at the winter gardens, i wanted to look at the different shapes different types of flowers had, and also wanted to consider size and texture. 

I wanted to create something which was quite simple. but had the wow factor. 

  

Inspirational Designers.

After looking at different forms for inspiration to my work i decided to look at what other designers have created with paper as well. 

Yulia Brodskaya.
Yulia Brodskaya is an Illustrator and Designer who is largely recognised for her 'papergraphics'. She experimented with her favourite aspects of design - typography, paper and hand crafting, and incorporated them all into one, resulting in her innovative and highly detailed paper based works. 

Elod Beregszaszi

Elod Beregszaszi creates incredibly intricate and detailed pieces of work by using range of techniques, such as cutting, folding, embossing and sculpting. He is very well known for creating pop-out pieces of work which are created by folding his original material in half.

His work is incredibly precise and holds alot of detail in just one piece.

”I guess I am trying to look for a language of folding; so with this series I want to cover as many cut & fold variations as i can to maybe find out some of the underlying visual (3D) and pattern (2D) principles.”   -http://www.planet-mag.com/2011/art/lizzi-reid/elod-beregszaszi/

Ingrid Siliakus.

Ingrid Siliakus discovered paper architecture after viewing work by Prof. Masahiro Chatani in Japan, and ever since has been amazed and intrigued by its depth. Once Siliakus has a design idea, she usually makes somewhere between 20 and 30 mini sculptures to help define how to make the final piece. Her work is produced purely by cutting and folding. 

Peter Callesen.

Peter Callesens work is simply stunning. It is created from one single sheet of paper, making him think about how he will build his 3d sculpture from the off-cut of the shape in the sheet. His work is based around the relationship between 2-D and 3-D dimensions.  

 Helen Musslewhite.
Helen Musslewhite create stunning hand crafted scultpures which use mainly bold colours and strong graphic edges. She uses different textured, patterned and coloured paper to create her pieces. Her work is usually built up of lots of different layers, and creates quite a fairy-tale like outcome. 

 Matt Shlian.
Matt Shlian's work is created by very detailed paper folding. He claims, 

'I begin with a system of folding and at a particular moment the material takes over'

This explains how Shlian feels that the paper has a mind of its own and fold in the directions that it wants to fold in to create a sculpture.

 Saved

repetitive forms.

Repetition, the main factor within this project.

Using natural forms found within the environment such as landscapes, rock formation, shells, wood & flowers, i researched further into the patterns which they form. One thing that attracted my attention most was the unique and beautiful patterns formed on shells.

Richard Sweeney workshops.

Workshop One. 

In this workshop we were introduced to Richard Sweeney and shown examples of the wonderful work that he has produced. 

"Richard’s practice combines the disciplines of design, photography, craft and sculpture, resulting in a varied output of work including graphic design and public sculpture commissions."

To get the feel of working in a similar way as him we were given paper and told to produce sculptural pieces which would take a 3D form but without using glue or tape. 

Only being allowed to use your scalpel, the A5 paper provided and your imagination, at first it was difficult to get going, But after a few attempts of slotting the paper together the ideas were flowing thick and fast. 

After experimenting with the paper and slotting it together in different ways, each outcome varied majorly. These are two of my favourite pieces from this workshop.

The sculpture in the image on the left-hand side was my first creation in that workshop, and was produced simply by cutting slits in the page and folding them round and slotting them back into the paper. I varied the size of the curve this created and the width of the piece of paper i used to make the curve. This piece reminds me of a spine in a human body in a very simple form. 

The sculpture in the image on the right-hand side was produced after i had experimented more with the different types of folds i could create and the different ways of slotting the paper together. This was created by cutting parallel slots vertically down the piece of paper, and removing every other section at one end so they could move freely. I then twisted opposite corners of the page into each other which coincidentally produced the flower-like shape and the loose sections of paper were folded outwards look like different petals of the flower. 

some more experiments i did in the first workshop are ...