Plaster balloon experiment

Out of the art work I have created recently, this was the one I enjoyed the most. This was because I found it challenging making the plaster and learning about a new material and how it works. The safety involved with plaster is very important, as it can reach unto temperatures between 80C and 120C depending on how far into the centre of the plaster you are. Having your clothes covered and hair tied back out of the way is vital as it can get messy when working with it. After following the safety precautions  I chose to use a balloon. I blew it up fully and tied it, then when the plaster was at the right consistency I smeared it all over the balloon. It took me two mixtures to cover the balloon as a thin layer was not working and the plaster kept sliding off  the balloon. 




After covering the whole of the balloon and leaving it to dry and become solid, I decided to test out screwing wholes in it randomly spaced out. However I chose the thicker areas of plaster so that I didn't crack the plaster and so that it didn't all fall apart. Then by accident one of my class mates turned the light off by accident then I thought of an idea to use light with in the balloon. I placed my phone torch inside of it and it created a very serial and warm feel to the room in my opinion. However linking it back to my utopia I felt it needed colour. 



So I chose ink. This changed the whole look of my plaster work and it became a lot brighter and more exciting. I started off by pouring little bits of each colour of the rainbow into the wholes that I used to project the light,  the ink then ran into the plaster balloon and created a stream of bright colours against the pale white inner area, as shown below. However as I was pouring the ink into the wholes it did leak slightly on the top of it, so I extended this idea and randomly splashed a variety of the colours  all over the top. This then resulted on creating a big, colourful, plaster balloon sculpture that I am quite proud of. 



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