Friday, July 31, 2009

American Museum of Natural History

I'm interning this summer at AMNH and I am working on fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, textiles, luxury goods, etc. for the Turfan Marketplace scene in the November-opening Silk Road exhibition.
I am mostly making faux fruit look more realistic by sculpting onto them or painting them, or both. I am also sculpting things from scratch as well as making molds and casts of real fruits and veggies.
Here are some examples of the work I am doing.
These bananas are 1/2 finished. They've come in as generic plastic things, and by this point I have sculpted new stems and ends onto them, and airbrushed them a bit. They are missing the top parts in this photo.
These apples have been primed because when we got them they were a silly red color. Soon they will be painted, all the stems removed and replaced with real wood.
Finished apples. Hand painted.
SO MANY APPLES.
1/2 finished figs. These were all the same so I cut them up and put them back together to vary the sizes. Then I sculpted new stems on a few of them. I painted them here, but they are still missing their detail work in this stage.
Closer to being finished, but not quite.
Finished bananas.

In most cases, I am given the species of the fruit, and told to figure out what that looks like, then go from the research I do. Sometimes the designers give me exact reference.

With these apricots, I just had to make them vary in color. The shapes and textures were pretty believable.
Sometimes there is miscommunication, for example, like when the designers said "golden peaches" I found reference online saying that golden peaches were a deep red, when infact they are more yellow than apricots. I will start a new batch of peaches next week, but here are the ones I made. They came a light pink color and I painted them red and yellow.
WRONG!
These watermelons are going to be in a lead ice chest that one of the artists is making, and another artist is painting the watermelons. I sculped the stems because the ones that came on them were made of floral tape and wire. In this photo, they are of course, unpainted, but I will photograph them later when they are in the ice chest.
These plums are weird and made of silicone, I just dusted them up to make them look more realistic.
I finally remembered to take a before and after shot.
BEFORE
AFTER

This is seaweed I made from thermoplastic and a heat gun, paint and chalk.


BEFORE
I airbrushed all these, one at a time.
AFTER

And I airbrushed these too.

My next tasks involve sculpting indian gooseberries, and peepul figs, and then casting them so that I only have to sculpt about 5 of each, then painting them.
There's so much more to do!

Friday, June 5, 2009

taxidermy repair - RISD

American bittern from 1900's.
This guy needed more work than I could give him, but I fixed his bulging eyes!
Broken wings now attached!
No orange feet anymore... and a new beak.
A new nose and no longer a neon pink mouth.
The prettiest baby deer ever.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

moving out

I am moved out of my apartment in Providence! This is my collection of taxidermy and beautiful things.

Repair work photos will be up soon, from the semester at the Nature Lab.
In the mean time, check out my Website that Laura Manns made for me.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

vivarium - good photos coming soon

VIVARIUM

Project with Laura Manns - almost completed. Our official photography will happen soon, these are just shots I took when we set it up for critique.

Shedding a tear



Birth room.

This picture is missing the nuts filling the middle room and the dirt pile at the top of the house.

Learning to shave.

Project with Laura Manns - almost completed. Our official photography will happen soon, these are just shots I took when we set it up for critique.


Final photos coming soon!

Also coming soon: all the taxidermy repair I've done for the Nature Lab this semester.

Monday, May 11, 2009

super bambi

before
after

she's so pretty!

Just a little fixing of the ears, airbrush work, and some gloss mod podge.

The birds are all coming along, most of them look a little neon at the moment with their first coat of yellow, I don't want to scare anyone.