A very welcome gift

I was delighted to be given this collection of medal ribbon off-cuts by the father of one of my pupils. This would have cost me a small fortune if I was to buy the same amount of ribbon on the internet. This will enable me to work on another two or three projects for which I already have ideas. I may even have enough to have a go at a smaller version of my 'Defence Nets' from a few years back. Just need to find a cargo net.

 

 

Many thanks to Harley's Dad!

What a waste......

....every now and then an idea just runs out of steam. Here's an example of that:

 

 

I don't know if I've lost interest in this because it's more about colour and I'm in more of a monochromatic mood at the moment or because I've thought of at least half a dozen better uses for the models since I began mashing these together.

It might work better in tones similar to those in 'Cross Formation'. It couldn't be any worse.

Shell Fragments

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is an idea which I originally gave to one of my 6th Year students who had based her folio on Dazzle pattern camouflage as used in WW1. We replaced the image of the steel balls contained within an artillery shell with as many of the faces we could find of service men from WW1 to act as a comment on the number of lives a single shell could take. It was almost a play on the phrase 'a bullet with my name on it'.

This obviously needs more thought but the casting of 1/6 scale soldiers' faces in latex has allowed me to start to bring this idea back into play. I'm limited here to A4 as that's the largest size I can print at. The image needs to be larger to allow room for more faces to give it its full impact. It's possibly something that could become more sculptural and three dimensional rather than the original 2D concept.

 

 

 

48 pieces

 

'48 Pieces'

Latex, Tippex,  acrylic, polyfilla, modroc,  plastic, chicken wire and medal ribbons on wood 

 

 

 

 

I don't think this will be the last version of this idea. The title refers to the number of figures supplied in toy soldier boxes from my childhood. The image refers back to a drawing done several years ago which was a comment on the sanitary version of war we present to our children. The soldiers from my youth were always in action poses and were never wounded or dead. I wanted to do something to express the reality of the human waste of war which was hidden from us when we were young so I thought the use of the crosses in the same neat rows that the figures come in was interesting visually. It also creates comparisons with the rows of crosses in the war cemeteries across the globe.

The sprue surrounding the grouping is a perfect fit and finished the image of this being something you could pull out of a box of soldiers nicely.

The lozenge pattern in the background has been provided rather neatly by chicken wire loaded down with latex, modroc and polyfilla. I'm enjoying the different textures created by these materials.

 

Below are some of the other incarnations of this idea from the past few years.