AEP Assignment Evaluation

Title of Artwork: Big Bad Thing (that was the title of our AEP assignment)
Medium: Clay, ceramic paint and glaze
Date: about September 2010

Big Bad Thing

Side view of Big Bad Thing

Back view of Big Bad Thing

The Big Bad Thing's side view

We were tasked in Sec 2 to create a Big Bad Thing, our own version of a child's nightmare monster.

This assignment was important to me as it was only the 2nd or 3rd time we were working with clay - and this was the most major assignment I had ever undertaken with clay.

I drew inspiration from Pooh's Hunny Pots. Too much honey can be a nightmare when it makes your throat feel like it's on fire and your eyes water. Big Bad Thing is essentially a misshapen pot of honey. It may not quite live up to its name but perchance tonight it will make its first appearance in your sleep... You will realise how absolutely gargantuan it is in the dream world.

I first did preparatory sketches which our teacher looked through; she then gave feedback. I first faced the difficulty of being too uncreative in my idea. I was prompted to think of ways by which my idea could be infused with more creativity. I was actually quite discouraged because of this initial difficulty. I then added the cutlery "dripping" down the sides of the honey pot. This was also to hint that the honey oozing out of the pot was actually honey and not hair, which some of my friends thought it looked like because of my sketching style (I use lines to make a dark area darker).

Big Bad Thing was a hollow structure of 2 pieces of clay brought together. I first made the
lid and the pot. The Thing's face was literally the pot. I created the large round eyes by rolling up 2 pieces of clay into almost equally sized balls and then flattening them with a flat panel of wood. However I couldn't flatten them well enough. Later on when attempting to stick them onto the Thing's body as eyes, they went out of shape.

For the lid I created a mesh of texture by using one of the potter's tools to create a mish-mash of grooves in the surface of the lid. Then after conjoining the lid and the pot together, I added the oozing honey by the sides of the lid. Next came the fork and the spoon and the knife, where I tried to achieve a look where the cutlery was flowing / growing out of the honey. The cutlery is surrealistic because they are bent at unnatural angles, and remind me of the melting clocks in Salvador Dali's work. The Thing is also meant to belong to a dream-like world, so it has traces of surrealism in it. Unfortunately we did not take any pictures of the process, so I only have pictures of the end product. ):

We sent the Things to the kiln. Afterwards I painted with ceramic paint onto the honey pot. It was then that I realised I had not finalised the colours of the decorative circles which I had planned to be painted on the Thing's body. However this problem was quickly overcome after I looked at the various colours available (and after some thinking). To my dismay(somewhat), the colours dulled after the paint dried. This made it so that what I originally saw was not what I got.

After the paint dried I applied a moderate layer of glaze over the Thing and placed it in the kiln.

When the sculptures were taken out, I realised that the glaze had flowed toward the bottom of my sculpture. Hence the glaze was no longer as even as it had been. (These were some of the difficulties and unforeseen results which I faced.)

I think that I should have been more meticulous in planning, such as the specific colours to be used for which areas. I should also have been more careful in handling the clay when it was still soft. I think that I managed to apply what I had learnt in SoVA lessons such as the use of texture, and juxtaposing warm and cool colours together. The volume of the sculpture is also satisfactory to me. For the eyes, which got out of shape when I tried to stick them onto the body of the sculpture, I should have rolled a piece of clay through the slab roller and then used a cylindrical object to cut out two eyes. I also could have used a flat object like a wooden panel to press the eyes onto the body.

I feel that I have learnt more about being creative through trial and error in this assignment. I will try to put in more creativity into my coursework sketches.