project #4 is underway

In seven short days I will be traveling home for Christmas break but until then, there is another project to be completed. This is my fourth project for my BDS 101 class and it's the last of the semester.

Project #4: A light fixture
For this project, we will be creating a light fixture using bristol board (a thick paper that comes in multiple weight options) as the structure material. We started out by experimenting with regular computer paper and seeing what happened when you folded, cut, twisted, tore, ripped, etc. to the paper. After many mini examples of paper manipulation, we were asked to bring in larger models of what our structure might look like. For these models, I continued to use printer paper as bristol board is more expensive and I did not know the direction I wanted to go yet.

This was one of my first paper models, made by cutting strips from the rectangles of paper and folding them over to meet up with each other in the middle. I thought this one was a promising idea.

This idea was good in theory, but ended up looking like a sad dying flower in paper form. I still liked the way the holes and wrinkles looked like lace, but I didn't know if I could find a good place to put the light bulb or if I could make it more structured and less flabby.

I have now been experimenting with the bristol board. I have not taken pictures of these examples yet, but I am planning on soon as our process notebook for this project is in the form of 20 photos we will turn in showing our progress, and 5 of them have to be of the final lamp. This was a HUGE relief when I found this out. I love making process notebooks, but they take lots of time and with the end of the semester fast approaching I was worried about making one for this project. So now I can just focus on the photography aspect of it, which will end up being really fun.

In other news...
We finished up our final drawing projects in BDS 103 which as been a huge relief, and a rewarding process. I was very nervous about this drawing class as I had no previous experience but I have grown a lot in my drawings. I am by no means a pro, but I could at least handle sketching and attempting way better than before. Our final drawing today was to sketch a self portrait, as this was also our first assignment in the class. I thought I'd share my results so you could see how I have improved over the semester in this course.

My final self portrait from class today. 

Here you can see my improvement over the semester.
Left: my self portrait from the very beginning of the year (8/21/12)
Right: my end of the year self portrait (12/3/12)

And just for fun, here's my drawing paired up with a picture of me from today.
For this activity we looked in to mirrors in order to complete the self portrait.

We also recently made books in drawing class of drawings we did from the Natural History museum on campus. I decided to do an homage to owls, and did all five of my drawings of owls. Here are some examples:

I covered my book in a very cute feather print that I made, so hopefully once those are graded and turned back to us I can post some pictures of the final book for you to see. While I am no means the best drawer in the class, I am pleased with my improvement and who knows, maybe I'll take another drawing class in the future.