project 1 #2

So I am working on my project, so far it is going really well. I think that the piece is going to be really cool. I haven't come up with a name for it though, which could be bad, considering how we have to have one soon. I was thinking of calling it the Ball and Chain, but I'm not sure if that is the right name yet. Being a "professional" artist is kinda hard. For class, we have to write an artist statement, that I have no idea what to write about my piece.
The assignment wasn't hard, once I drew around for a bit I came up with some ideas that I thought would be cool to make. It was kinda hard coming up with things to draw at first, but as I went on, it got easier. Some of my preliminary ideas were something like these....

I thought that the heart one was kind cool, but then I didn't know where I would attach my skin, as the assignment ruled necessary. The other one, which I have no idea what to call it, would have been cool, but it seemed a bit complex for what the assignment called for. So after 5 or 6 drawings that we were assigned to do for class, I basically had nothing that I felt would make a good project.

I came up with my current project while listening to our teacher lecture. I was taking notes in my sketchbook and doodling at the same time and this arose from my artistic adventure....
I thought that this would be a good project because it has a very strong backbone, or armature, and the circles also act as a sort of armature. In addition, the shading on the circles would be the sort of skin, made of paper, or nylon, or something like that.
I was kinda excited once I figured out what I would make, now a whole other adventure began. Figuring out what to make it out of.
Our teacher suggested wire, but I wanted to be original and not use it at first. After thinking about my project for days on end, I came to the conclusion that wire would probably be most conducive for the work that I want to do on this project. I got a hold of some galvanized electric fence wire, and although it is tough, and hurts my hands, it worked well for my armature. It hurt my hands at first, but I quickly learned to move with the wire, instead of being cut by it almost every time I try to do something with it.

Finished drawing with ideas of what to make the components out of.

While making the project, my first task was to create the backbone in which every thing would be attached to. To make that, my first idea was to tape the wires in the middle together and bend them all at once so they would all look similar, and then wrap them with another piece of wire to keep them together. Turn out that 15 or so pieces of wire are much stronger than I am. So onto another idea, bending each individual wire. this took about a half an hour to make them all relatively the same, however, I am glad I did it this way. It gives the piece more of a modernistic feel I think. Once I got them all bent, I tied them all together with a smaller gauged wire. It looks really cool I think. I like the way it turned out.
The next party was making the circles. I wasn't sure how to do this to make the circles perfectly round. I was going to bend them around things, but everything I used moved, making it impossible to get a good shape from them, so I went with hand bending them. It turned out that hand bending them worked a lot better, and looked better in the end.

So here it is, without the skin put on it yet. Its as far as I've gotten...