Plaster Experimentation

As the semester has progressed, so has my thought process with my work for my independent painting study. I spent a lot of time with my nose in a book-in particular Aesop's Fables. I stumbled across this book in the basement of my grandmother's house this past summer. There, I felt nostalgic as I flipped through the pages of old children's books that recharged memories. I never realized the deeper meaning or moral in the fables.
One story that really stuck with me was the story of "The Hart & the Vine".

"A Hart, who was being pursued by hunters, hid himself under the broad leaves of a shady, spreading Vine. When the hunters had gone by, he thought himself quite safe and began to eat the leaves of the Vine. The rustling of the branches drew the attention of the hunters, and they shot their arrows toward the sound and killed the Hart. As he lay dying, he admitted that he deserved his fate for ungratefully destroying the friend who had kindly sheltered him in time of danger."

MORAL: Ingratitude often leads to ruin.

I immediately started to sketch and began the process of abstract representation of the fable. The moral of the story really spoke to me.

Here are some process pictures....

1. Foam board cut out of antler- positive and negative

 2. I plastered over the antlers and got an amazing texture...but due to the treated canvas it did not adhere and all chipped away the next day.

 3. Used the antler stencil and practiced with the plaster on a piece of plywood=SUCCESS

I'm going to continue exploring this process with abstract representations of the fables. I am interested in the fox character- it appears in many stories and seems to have a reoccurring theme.