Contrasting traits project

In this project, we had to connect to opposing traits that define us in a sculpture, and I decided to go with maliciousness and sweetness, both of which are obviously reflected in the bear and the kitchen knives stabbing it. It took me five idea sketches to get to this since I was having artist's block with this assignment, and as soon as I had it reviewed and all the details down, I took the lightest-color bear in my closet and ripped it in half with an exacto knife. Keeping the cream color of the bear in mind, I purchased a quilt with a similar, soft color palette, but also trying to work with the deep red color of blood and maintaining the sense of child-like innocence and joy. After having that picked out, I created a structure to present the bear on the quilt, and made it out of card board and broken pencils to hold it at the 90 degree angle I needed it to be- yes, I'm cheap. I then draped the quilt on it to achieve some folds, hot-glued in place, laid the bear off-center, and then drenched it in my home-made blood, (ketchup, highly concentrated red water color, and water), all over the area I stabbed the bear to give it the effect of wounds, as well as flinging the blood all over the quilt to give it the effect of the stabbing action. As a finishing touch, I hot-glued old kitchen knives into the biggest wound-areas of the bear and adjusted them into varying angles to give it more of that 'malicious' effect.


Overall, the critique was well-receptive, and most agreed that my choices to use lighting and old, broken kitchen knives were good. However, they said they would've like to see more of those old kitchen knives included, as the newer-looking ones weren't as nice, and a different way to try this same idea is to use more or less knives, and to try to add more blood stain on the knives going into the bear.