In last stage, I carved wax and using silica gel to translate lizard skin, and colored them afterwards.
Based on my research on lizard foot textures and more exploration of colors, I carved another pieces of wax to translate skins. Differ from last time, I added dry color powder into liquid silica gel and colored them into another visual results.
Compared with last time, I prefer this result.
These samples are results of 3D printed clear resin combined with silica gel casting surface.
I used the carved metal piece as mould, and put silica gel on it, got a result of casting translated surface. I attached this silica surface on the 3D print shells and colored them, got a result like this purple&yellow one.
As I posted in my blog recently, I carved and got a casting square piece last week.
I used this piece as mould to make some silica gel samples. Doing this is one of the ways of translating the lizard skin, including the texture and colors.
These color patterns are all based on my research on the lizard skin. I picked up some parts of the skin, or combine some parts together, to get some color matches.
3D print should better be used for tiny and more complicated pieces. This time I still use 3D print to make this shell, but I adjust it into a harder for handmade but better for my structure design one.
My experiment plan for this shape as a unit of the structure is using soft connectors to connect them. Because this would be a small whole piece, I don’t need to open it and set the connectors, in this way the units could be more stable individually.
And for this repetition design, I would make mould to repeat more of them after casting and polishing. Lets see how this gonna work after making out the samples.
The sample of the sphere structure I drew was finished yesterday. The result is not bad, I could basically sure about this plan would work, but need to be improved in many aspects.
Analyze this sample, the problem are:
Our MA class had an amazing workshop today. Zoe and Rebecca organized this for us to get more understandings and ideas about our body. It was a good way to think about the relationship between jewellery and body.
We worked as group, each group got same materials: a 20m paper roll and a sticky tape roll. Every group would make a performance in about one hour, with the limited materials we got. The making process and performance were great out of imagination.
In my whole MA program, I plan to using the post-gender concept to express my understanding of future gender aesthetics. In my study, I could not just think about what it looks like, but more about how the post-gender group of people would wear a jewellery as a symbol. So creating more wearabilities for only one piece of jewellery is a very important part of my study. Therefore, I have the idea of making a continuous structure to realize more wearabilities.
df02639b9f6c4a2d88ff7b8b71e380ac.jpg. saved from 3D printing industryThe continuous structure were more used into textile area and mostly made from soft flexible materials. I tend to using hard materials to make them in the way of repetition of geometric shapes, this idea was originally inspired by the flexible skin of lizard, in a way it could attach on different shape with their own shape changes.
c1d2ed2bceeae139a43825a85b2c60cf.jpg Saved from Dreamstime Stock Photos
As a jewellery maker, when seeing these jewelleries my reaction might be different from other audience who are not in jewellery area. And there are both advantages and disadvantages on this point.
It could be more easily for me to ignore the very first visual feeling and just skip to the observation of the making details, so I need slow down and feel my first impression of a piece of jewellery, then think about what the artist want to express, is that same or different from my first impression, and think about their making process as well.
New technologies have strong influence on contemporary jewellery. When seeing the jewellery which were made years ago but carrying technologies or new materials, I could associate how necessary I should do research on the new technology and materials nowadays. Even it’s hard to get them or apply them soon, technologies still have big opportunities to change peoples habit or create new wearable products. And thats why I want to study on future aesthetics and futurism style, even though the very highest technologies would not be directly used into jewellery, they would change people’s life and way of thinking in different ways, and jewellery should keep up with that on this specific aspect.
As our course continues, Zoe and Rebecca had another amazing idea for us on Thursday: to create a materials library for our design studio!
In teams, we need to find 100 materials in 1 hour, together select 50 of the most interesting and check our findings with other groups to avoid repetition.
We analyzed the material qualities, thought of 5 questions to evaluate and test the properties of each material. Then we recorded and wrote down the answers on the labels, made some categories for our materials.
During our finding and selecting job, it was really interesting to realize that we could actually find a lot of weird or amazing things just on the street. And we found that some materials could be imagined how to be used, but some materials even hard to imagine the using way, although they already caused strong reactions. During the hunting, our team brought back a real piece of shit lol.
Rebecca and Zoe organized a silent auction for our MA students, which helped us to get deep understandings of value.
For the auction, everyone made a piece of jewellery in one and a half hours, then displayed them in the auction. Then everyone give the “Money” (they were actually notes with any amount of money we’d like to mark on) to the 5 pieces of jewellery they would like to buy, with their evaluated price.
The most interesting thing was most of us actually realized that only the jewellery was not enough, we need advertising, good display or a supporting story for our jewellery as well.
Jewellery were valued in different ways. We take precious of a jewellery not only because it’s commercial price, but also the emotional connection we feel, the story that means something and the happiness it could bring us.
Prim Jewellery 
