Commencing Experiments...

Now I have a Maquette, I am now able to explore visual ways of showing my weight loss. I thought a good way of doing this would be to add weight back on as a way of representing my body both before and after the body sculpting process.
I started by covering the Maquette with a plastic bag and creating a wall using clay so I could create one and a half inch plaster panels.

 

At this point, I started to have doubts about how successful this process would be and even if refining it would improve the aesthetics. However, I did not want to abandon this idea with out exhausting all possibilities...
So I shaped the panels using a rasp to see how this would effect the overall look...

 

 

Once the panels were shaped, I used fish gut to secure onto the Maquette, however, if I developed the idea further I would secure using magnets.
I wrapped the tape measure around the Maquette as this would be marked with my inch loss which I would hope would make the piece more relevant in terms of my personal journey.
I also tried painting the panels with latex to represent fat...

 

Not Working...

 

When I had the idea of representing the weight I had lost, I wasn't quite sure what I expected the work to look like. However, I know this is not the visual response I was hoping for.

Despite obvious aesthetical issues (which I could address when refining the process) the model lacks visual impact and has an un-nerving predictable quality. Which makes me want to run in the opposite direction, which I may do.

I'm not completely abandoning this idea yet, as I have an idea that explores negative space in relation to the body. However, I want to create something new, fresh and out of the box exciting and I have a feeling that this approach is none of these things!