Volumetrics

Our third project was called volumetrics and involved finding a generally very small object and scaling it up drastically into unreal proportions.  I had quite a bit of trouble deciding on my subject, first choosing a boring, incredibly simple pencil sharpener, but, recognizing the simplicity of it, I knew that wouldn't do. The only other thing I could think of was a dragonfly, so I went with it!

I never actually did any sketches because since I wasn't actually designing the creature, just merely scaling its size, I thought it better to just look at some up close pictures.

I enlarged and printed the picture of the wing detail to provide a real time reference when creating the wings. I mainly used the head picture to get an idea of how to attach the eyes and it made me adamant about getting the hexagonal compound eyes appearance in my recreation.

I started off with probably the most complex part: the wings. How was I supposed to create a membrane between the veins? More importantly, how was I supposed to create the veins in the first place?! I eventually thought about a plastic used to seal off drafty windows during the winter to create the membrane, and that lead to bending the outer, over-all shape of the each wing out of clothes hangers, because the plastic needs a place to attach in all directions and the wings needed to be stiff anyway. The yellow tape was removed and the wire bent around itself like the other three, and they were all painted black to be more true to the real wings.

With that, I decided I would use the wing detail picture as not only a reference for the outlines, but also the veins. Once I had stretched the plastic on the outlines, I traced the lines onto each one individually with a Sharpie marker. It really wasn't as difficult as I made it out to be. By the way, when sitting like this, the wings have a 30 inch wingspan, just to give you an idea of the scale.

I then needed to figure out a way to create the body of the dragonfly. I didn't want it to be too heavy so clay was not an option, and I needed it to be decently sturdy for transportation's sake. I got an idea, from a friend of mine, to use something called plaster cloth. Which is essentially paper maché on steroids, so of course I would need a structure to which to apply it. I bought two half spheres, a large cone, and a few cylindrical pieces of floral foam, as well as a large sphere and two egg shaped pieces of typical styrofoam. I spent the next couple evenings carving and molding the pieces into the right shapes and eventually got what you see to the right.

The head, main body (the white part), and the beginning of the tail (part right behind the white part) are all connected with the dowel rod sticking out of the front there, and the rest of the tail is all connected by two parallel clothes hanger wires that have been bent downward slightly to give the tail a curve. The aforementioned beginning of the tail was made out of the bottom part of the large cone, the head out of the two half spheres (pointlessly bought separately because they were put together into a sphere.), the main body out of the large sphere which I had to carve down to match the angle of the cone, the tail out of the cylindrical floral foam,

and the little pincers out of the bifurcated tip of the cone.

I had not yet made the eyes at this point.

Once the foam was secured together, my mother and I layered the plaster cloth over the structure generously to come out with this. I was very pleased with how smooth it appeared and how easily the cloth worked. I did start to notice some proportional disparities, however; as a dragonfly with that size body would have a much smaller head. Relatively speaking, of course.

I had to allow the plaster a little time to dry, but soon after I spray painted the entire thing black as a base color. Little did I know that plaster doesn't like spray paint, and was rejecting just as much as it was allowing to stick. I ended up having to touch it all up with acrylic paint and a brush. Once that dried, I painted yellow markings on it. They ended up being too bright for my taste, looking far too much like a deformed hornet than a dragonfly, so I lightly misted over the yellow with some black spray paint for the

final effect on it.

As for the eyes, they were definitely tricky. In order to get the hexagonal effect, I cut up a shower pouf (yep, that's what they're called) and stretched a piece over each eye. I then used some rave hair color for which I had to uncomfortably go to a beauty shop. I used a combination of two colors: a super bright neon green as the base coat to give the brightness, and a misting of a shiny, somewhat metallic turquoise as the second coat. I was trying my best to mimic the iridescence of real dragonfly eyes. I didn't get it exactly right, but I think they came out looking pretty good. I let it dry just a bit, then peeled the pouf off, leaving black lines where they had covered.

I had to touch up some areas around the eyes where some of the hair color had gotten past my newspaper, then attach the wings to the back. Unfortunately, my method of attachment was pretty crude. I simply took large metal staples (usually used to hold down wiring in houses) and stabbed two into each pair of wings, straddling where they meet in the center, then glazed the area over with a transparent adhesive. I would have preferred a more elegant solution, but it worked out pretty well. Here is a picture of the final product with a small size comparison. I must say, I'm pretty proud of the wings and the eyes particularly.