Sunday 30 January 2011

It's all PAPER play!

So we had this workshop with designer Richard Sweeney, who works with paper. He set us a task of taking an A5 piece of white card and manipulating it using scoring, tearing, cutting and folding to try and create something interesting and unique. The only catch was that we weren't allowed to use any form of adhesive to secure the sculpted pieces (crafty tabs and slots work wonders!!) and we had to use only the one sheet (no adding extra's - taking pieces away was allowed). I found this task slightly overwhelming at first however after trying out the different techniques and experimenting with the material given to me I discovered that you can actually create some really nice and individual pieces. (If this works, I will put some pictures up of some of the pieces I created - however I'm new to Blog-ing so I can't promise anything!)

1) The first piece I created using multiple curved score lines and interlocking tabs.

2) Photographing your work from different angels really adds interesting curves and surfaces that you miss at first glance.

3) This piece seems extremely complicated when in reality it was maybe 2 scores and some clever secret tabs... cheeky!!

4) I continued the theme of curved scoring as I figured it created really elegant and interesting layers and surfaces.

5) This is the back view of the previous piece. I like how the shadow in the image really shows definition of the point.

6) This pieces seems to just hold itself in position really elegantly, the large front surface appears to be flat, however it follows the curve of the spiral on the left. 

7) I started to develop the idea of curved scoring and went on to use more than one score line to create pieces like the one below... reminds me of a sculpture.

8) I then discovered that by interlocking pieces rather than creating slots and tabs, sometimes the connection is smoother.

9) I especially like the long flat surface on this piece and due to the lighting in which it was photographed there is a lovely gradient of shadow and highlight detail.

I definitely learnt a lot from Richard Sweeney. Paper is truly underestimated as a material and after this workshop I think that I will definitely consider it much more, maybe in a variety of colours and patterns.

(Hopefully more advanced and improved pieces to come!)... watch this space!!