Transcription Project

The Rape of Ganymede-Domiano Mazza

Our brief for this project was to find a painting at the national gallery that we wanted to transcribe. I chose this particular painting as I was drawn more to it than the others, it felt very dark and pagan underneath all the natural lines and soft tone of the painting. The eagle in the picture is Zeus kidnapping Ganymede to take as his lover in Olympus. I wanted to put across how when looking at this picture the man in the painting almost looks feminine and is taken away against his will, which shows some form of control and dominance.




















I came up with the idea of creating this scene on a human model, therefore I wanted the front of the model to be eagle and the back of the model to represent Ganymede. I wanted to create an apron like garment for the model to wear on the front with feathers on. I created my own feathers by trimming bits of fabric, I made several of these and pinned them on a mannequin. I felt the overall outcome was successful. The next day I had to create a base (the apron) to be able to stick the feathers on. I drew the shape I wanted, cut it out and then made  seams for the edges using the sowing machine. This was a long and frustrating process as the tail of the garment had to align exactly in the middle of the mannequin. I then had to mix fabric dye and yellow acrylic paint to create a skin colour mixture which I then applied onto the base, as I wanted the base to blend into the body so that the garment wouldn't look too much like a dress but rather a part of the model's body. Again I thought the outcome was successful however the base took much longer than I expected it to.

The next day I focused on the human part of the model and how it would look like. I sketched and experimented with quite a few ideas. My initial idea was to paint onto the model's back images of ancient greek men to represent the obvious homosexual connotations in the painting however that would have proved difficult therefore instead I thought of painting clingfilm and then sticking it onto the model's back to creating a surreal effect. I experimented using someone's arm to see how it would look. I wans't pleased with the outcome as it didn't look natural enough therefore I then thought about painting cloth's on the model's back with handprints to show the control in the painting, this was my final idea. I thought the development of my ideas were very clear and I tried to use different mediums to get the image I wanted.

When the base for my garment was dry I transferred the feathers onto it using a glue gun. I then set up a backdrop to take my final photographs of my idea. I painted the cloth's and handprints onto the back of my model using skin colour acrylic paint. My model wore my garment on the front and I used fishing wire to hang the garment from her. I thought my photos came out really well, however since we didn't have much time it seemed like we were  rushing to get the photos done therefore to improve I could have spent more time planning exactly where I wanted my model to be in the photo to save time.

Balance Workshop

Balancing using a range of materials

The challenge of this workshop was to create a balanced composition that would hold without the use of adhesives, wires etc. We achieved this with my teammate Nelly and felt that we created interesting and diverse compositions.  Personally, I thought this was a challenge that didn't really grasp my attention at first as I felt it had no sense of direction as I prefer to have a set route when designing or creating something. However, once I was involved with the workshop the idea seemed more appealing and the pictures above were the first compositions we created. I discovered that randomly adding different materials and developing as you go was the best way to work.

Water wheel

There was one material I was inspired by which was the large rolling pin. It reminded me of water wheels therefore we tried balancing the rolling pin on tracks so that we could add things on top. I discovered that the idea of filling a pot with water and placing it straight on the middle of the rolling pin would keep it balanced and prevent it from rolling. However, we could not achieve the balance all the time so the amount of water we put in was very important. Our project had quite a scientific approach to it which was interesting. Perhaps to get the balance right quicker we should have experimented on a smaller scale first.