The first set of soldering for the first ring.

 I guess the project I've been working on the most recently is my miniature ferris wheel.  A few weeks ago, I had posted that I had the rungs soldered to the rings. After discussion with my instructor, I snapped off the rungs and decided to start over.

At my instructors suggestion, I used a needle file to file grooves into the copper rings. I then filed down the ends of the brass welding rod rungs so that they would fit into the grooves.

Detail of the grooves filed into the rings

 I was really nervous when working with the second rung, hoping that it would work the way that I wanted and planned for it to work. Fortunately, it did. I had numbered off the different rungs so that I would be able to match them up when I was attaching the two rings together.

Side view. I numbered the grooves so that I could match the rings up.

Getting ready to solder the second ring on.

It worked!

After I soldered the rings together, my next project was to solder on the rotation spokes so that the wheel would be able to turn. It was kind of a difficult piece to work with, but with patience and perseverance, I got the spokes soldered on so that there was a good connection made.

Beginning to solder on the spokes so the wheel can rotate.

Mostly after an acid bath. The one side is really dirty though.

Rotation rung

Side view of rotation rung

Both rungs soldered on

After soldering the rotation spokes on, I was determined to work with the stand and complete it as fast as possible. I had the design all figured out, but it didn't quite work out as I had hoped. I had filed the edges of the braces holding up the ferris wheel so that they were curved a bit and fit around the hollow tubing that I had.

But I went too fast and the proper connections were not made when I soldered the pieces together. So after consideration, I snapped off the braces and started over again. Fortunately, the second time that I worked on the braces, they turned out more so the way that I wanted them to turn out.

Cleaned up Ferris wheel

 It took a lot of polishing and sanding to clean up the ferris wheel, but I finally did it.

So shiny

Sitting in the bowl of liver of sulfur and ammonia.

Top view of the Ferris wheel.

 After I cleaned up the ferris wheel, my instructor and I decided to dip the piece in a mixture of liver of sulfur and ammonia, to turn the copper black and darken the brass.

After I rotated the Ferris wheel in the mixture.
I would let it sit for a while and then rotate it to a new side.

Ferris wheel after liver of sulfur and ammonia bath.
I think that the darkened metal really helps.

 I was and still very proud of how this piece has turned out and I hope that when I put the carts on, it will look just as good as I am hoping it will.

Top view of darkened Ferris wheel.

Showing all the license plates and
brass shim for the backing of the charms

Well, for updates on my jewelry projects, I've been working on my idea for a charm bracelet. Each charm has a license plate from a different state, and once a person visits that state, the corresponding charm can be placed onto the bracelet. I used brass shim stock for the backing of the charms.

Each piece that I used was 1 inch by 1/2 inch. I used a pair of pliers to bend the edges over the paper for protection.

Showing how all sides were folded down

At first, I was able to bend all edges of brass shim over to create a barrier to be used later for a thin coat of resin, but due to different pieces being different sizes, I decided to just fold two sides over so that

License plates lined up and showing how
only two sides were folded over to hold down the paper

After I had all license plates held down by brass shim, I lined all of them up on a sheet of cardboard and took them outside and sprayed three different coats of flat clear spray paint on them to hold down the paper. I also did this to keep the ink from bleeding when I put the layer of resin on.

Close up of how the brass shim and paper license
plates look

My hope is that these will turn out the way that I want them to. I am thinking about making a second set of charms for a friend with the base being a thin layer polymer clay instead of brass shim. Depending on which set I like the most, I will make a third set of charms and a bracelet to go with for my mother.

Well, I should have done this far before now, but I need to talk about when I attended the Juried reception for the "Transforming Viewpoints" exhibit. I thought that as a whole, the exhibit was really interesting. I will say that I didn't quite agree with the artworks that were chosen as the winners,  but I wasn't the one judging.

The juror, Steve Liggett thought that it was interesting judging the show because it had a narrow theme. Most of the shows he had judged, the narrowed theme wasn't present, but with this, he was concerned about choosing artworks that matched the quality and criteria he was looking for. The theme was multicultural diversity.

I talked to Maria Thompson, the assistant director of Student Diversity Programs about the work that the Office of Student Diversity purchased to hang in their office, and she said they [as a staff] thought it was the best representation of multicultural diversity.

Thompson collaborated with Portico Bowman, the PSU Gallery director to create the exhibit and event as a way to bring multicultural events to the PSU campus.

For the artists who were exhibited, their work had to be selected to be in the show, and artist Greg Krepps was glad to be getting back into the art scene since he hadn't exhibited for a while. He said that "Transforming Viewpoints" was a good show. "Getting picked to exhibit was pretty exciting for me. I've been out of the loop for a while."

To show my Commercial Art I illustrations, I think that they have improved in the second assignment since the first. My shading techniques alone improved and I felt that I was able to convey more of a story than I had in the first assignment.

In the first assignment, we were supposed to create a story with two 10" x 15" panels, one panel portraying an outside scene and the other portraying an inside scene, each with at least four people. My outside scene at best was mediocre. The people in it were not anatomically correct, and the whole piece in my opinion was just a disaster. The inside scene was a bit better. It had better shading, better facial features, and was more anatomically correct. I felt that I conveyed that the children were smaller than the woman. But my issue with my shading is that you can see my lines. The shades and tones don't just blend together, and that's something that I need to improve upon.

Assignment #1
Outside panel
10" x 15"
Pencil on Bristol

Assignment #1
Inside panel
10" x 15"
Pencil on Bristol

In the second assignment, we were told to pick a historical event and create two panels with depicting that event. Each panel had to have four people in them, and I chose to portray the sinking of the Steamboat Arabia, near northern Kansas City, Kansas in 1856 in the Missouri River.

A bit of the back story: the steamboat hit what was thought to be a snag, but turned out to be an entire dead log that was submerged under water. The log ripped out the bottom of the steamboat and within 10 minutes, the steamboat had sunk to the bottom of the river with only the smokestacks visible above the water. All the passengers survived except for the one mule chained to the boat. Decades later, the river had moved and changed course. One farmer decided to check his field and began to transect the area. He eventually found the sunken boat, and an excavation was begun. Although covered in mud, the entire contents of the boat had been preserved. There is a museum that shows all the artifacts that have been preserved, including clothing and fabric.

The outside panel depicted the actual sinking of the Arabia. This was a harder piece to create, because there was not actual photos for references of the sinking of the steamboat. I had to come up with a fairly original piece and guess what the sinking boat actually looked like, which was an interesting concept. Some art that I looked at for reference photos included:

My design that I came up with was more detailed than I thought it would originally be. I used my eraser to smear the marks to make it appear like water was pouring off of the wheel and the hull of the steamboat. During the class critique, it was mentioned that the smoke coming out of the smokestacks should be more adjusted to the level of shading that the rest of the illustration was. It appeared "sketchy" and not the same as the rest. 

Assignment #2
Outside panel
10" x 15"
Pencil on Bristol

The inside panel depicted the paddle wheel of the steamboat inside the museum. I thought that it would be an interesting element to tie the two illustrations together. The reference photo that I used was taken inside of the museum.

I liked the idea of adding two people as if they were looking up at the wheel as they were touring the museum. To show depth, I drew an adult figure with two smaller figures to show levels on the second floor. I felt that the shading I complete on the paddle wheel was better than I have done in previous pieces, and was a better accomplishment to show my skills.

Original pinning

 Began to work on my next jewelry piece again. I want it to be a kinetic piece that would be a ferris wheel that would actually rotate. The problem that I ran into last semester and for the first trial today was that the steel pins would become soldered or attached to the brass rod of the rail and the brass would not be soldered to the piece of copper tubing.

Soldered pins to brass piece

 However, I realized that I had been pinning the brass pieces wrong. I had pinned them at the bottom, and learned that if I pinned them at the top, I wouldn't have the trouble with the pins being soldered to the brass, and the solder itself would be easier to maneuver, and the torches flame would be easier to reach the joint.

Second pinning

Piece with newly soldered brass rods

As can be seen, the brass piece soldered so much easier to the copper tubing.

To reintroduce myself, my name is Gretchen Burns and I am currently a student at Pittsburg State University. I'm a double major in biology with an emphasis in field biology and environment and art with an emphasis in jewelry design. Even though I am emphasizing in jewelry design, my goal in life is to attend an American Medical Association accredited school and obtain a Master's degree in Medical and Biological Illustration and continue on in a career of emphasis.

Currently, my work ranges all over the board, as I take new classes and experiment with new techniques and methods to drawing, inking, painting, and jewelry design. Hopefully, my work in the future will be illustrations that are featured in medical and biological journals, magazines, textbooks, etc. I'm hoping to learn how to make my art and illustrations more available toward other venues, but at the moment, I have not yet learned those.

As common as this sounds, I look to Leonardo da Vinci's illustrations from his journals for inspiration on illustration. He was extremely curious about how things worked, moved and changed and studied them. He kept notebooks and sketched everything out, in turn, teaching himself to become a better artist.

A goal of mine is to familiarize myself with more illustrators so I can learn different styles and techniques to perfect my own and find what I am comfortable with.