Punches

Restoring old punches and making new ones that relate to my work.

Bowes, K., (2020). Restored dot, line and chasing punch.

Bowes, K., (2020). New leaf punches.

Bowes, K., (2020). Punch test.

Second Print

 

Bowes, K., (2020). 3D prints.

For my second print, I kept to the oval shape as its curved shape was more appealing to me. I reduced the size and mirrored the lettering but they still don't fit together, which is frustrating as they line up exactly. I also need to consider having extra space when the male and female clip together to accommodate the metal thickness of the metal that will be shaped in the mould.

3D Prints for Moulds

  My current brief I am working with is to make a piece of jewellery using punches and a mould but not using silicon and wax injecting.

Bowes, K., (2020). 3D printed tags.

I 3D printed a male and female version of the word xylem as the starting point for making a mould. I felt lettering would be the easiest and xylem isn't a word that is heard every day. I felt that the prints were too big being 60mm long. I also felt the male and female need to reflect one another so they can clip into one another thus creating more of a punch and die set. 

Postcards

 

Illustrated Postcards from Nora Kovats

I just received these postcards from Nora Kovats. I love the watercolour and ink techniques used in the illustrations all of the plants are painted in watercolour but only the important ones in the foreground have ink outlines so they stand out from the background. 

I aspire to work more like this where there is less of an end result in mind at the start and just trust the process as I work, which is the feeling I get from these postcards. 

Organic Magnification

As I have been finishing off my semester report I noticed something about all my unfinished pieces. I am looking at growth, mostly in plants, from three different magnifications: the plant as a whole, segments of the plant and the cellular structure. Growth happens at different levels, it starts with cells that together make up the tissue(leaves), those tissues create an organism (the plant). 

So far in my work, I have used different techniques to display each stage, I cast whole succulents, used leaf skeletons as enamel stencils and in my platinum piece pierced out patterns that resemble cells. I want to continue with enamelling, casting and piercing but I don't want to restrict each stage of magnification to a single technique.

I am not focusing on one particular plant as different plant work better for different processes, for example, succulent leaves can't be made into skeletons but they have a perfect thickness for casting but the flaming glorybower leaves are the only leaves I have found to work when making the skeleton leaves. 

Biological diagram of a leaf
https://o.quizlet.com/zIlVHfngIiKm0zPje6Lojw_b.jpg 

Silver Butterfly wing

I cast another butterfly wing but this time in silver (Fig.2). I attached the wing to the wax the same way I did the first casting (Fig.1) and it worked just as well as the first prototype. All the details came through in the silver but I still feel the piece is too thick for a butterfly wing. I am going to file it thinner but I want to get more wings to make a few more but using a thinner layer of wax. 

Figure 1- Bowes, K., (2020). Wing set in wax.

Figure 2- Bowes, K., (2020). The silver casting of the wing.

Cast Succulents

 My succulent, Aeonium Sedifolium, I bought during the lockdown grow enough for me to cut off sections for casting.

Bowes, K., (2020). Sterling silver cast succulents.

 I had an idea of making the succulents into rings, as seen in the image below, but the leaves are delicate as where they join the stem is narrow in comparison to the tip of the leaves thus making them brittle and easy to break off. I tumbled them for some time to help harden the silver but I am still wary about making them into rings.

Bowes. K., (2020). Succulent as a 'ring'.