Relief Casting: Flowers and Leaves

  Today, I worked in the Fine Art studio following the same process as the denim relief casting to create relief castings of plastic net, flowers and other foliage. 

Again following the same method as the denim relief casting I have done previously, I began by rolling out the clay and using the guide sticks ensured that everything is at an equal level. I then cut the clay into rectangular shapes before pressing my chosen materials into the clay. Once I had cut all of my rectangles I began to press each of the materials into the clay one by one, when pressing the flowers into the clay I lightly rolled the rolling pin over the top of the clay to pick up the finer details, but to ensure the clay doesn't flatten I kept the guide sticks either side. Once I had pressed the first two sets of flowers into the clay I built walls around the clay rectangles, one using clay for the walls and the other using cardboard so that I could experiment and discover which walls were the most efficient and had less leaks. After the walls were tightly secured I then poured in the plaster into the moulds and left them to dry before removing them at a later date. 

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Once I had experimented with the smaller sized tiles, I rolled out a larger one where I imprinted multiple materials including fruit netting, berry branch, leaves, small flowers, daffodil and sticks (twigs). I created this larger tile by layering different materials and pressing them with a rolling pin individually to imprint them all into the clay. Then I again followed the same process. I feel as though all of my experiments were successful, but I do believe my practice has been approved upon from using this process for both the denim relief castings and the material, landscape relief casting. What didn't work too well within these relief casting's was where I used the leaves as they made a very faint imprint into the clay meaning that they didn't pick up very well. If I was to do these relief castings again I would use alternative flowers and materials also, to improve upon the imprints from the leaves I would turn them so that the veins would be imprinted giving a more defined imprint into the clay. I believe to improve upon my practice of relief casting further I could try something other than the previous textiles and the natural materials, by using manmade objects such as nuts and bolts, engine parts, or even a bike chain, as I feel as though they'd create a detailed yet interesting relief. I chose to use the flowers as the primary object because I liked how delicate they are and how they made lots of fine, intricate prints into the clay.