My Final Year as a Fine Art student at UCS

Everything complete, finished Saturday afternoon. I was originally going to just have things under the glass top of the cabinet with sketchbooks in the top drawer, but I thought it would be a waste of some of the other work I had done so I decided to have two drawers. One with personal items and the other with museum items in which I stuck to the drawers with small pieces of double-sided tape so they wouldn’t move when opening. I also put a sign on the top of the cabinet so people could know they could look through sketchbooks and left the top drawers slightly open to make people want to view my work. I also decided to paint the inside of those drawers white because they weren’t very clean inside and had paint marks everywhere.

I had a bit of trouble with the label plates as I was going to put on handles or new plates but ran out of time, so when It came to putting them back on I had to improvise and use drawing pins as I didn’t have some of the pins which were used to fix the plates on.

I actually like how they look with the drawing pins

I made labels like you get in a museum for the items under the glass and had the real items next to the drawings to show real vs drawing and give that museum feel of objects under glass. The labels were fiddly and took a long time but worth it.

I’m really happy with how everything has turned out and I hope people who come to the degree show like it too

I haven’t updated lately, I’ve been too busy with designing the degree show catalogue and trying to sort out a cabinet so I’m a bit behind with studio practice at the moment.

I’m so lucky to find this cabinet after looking for quite a while for one. Was just browsing through gumtree when I found it. I asked straight away and had to figure out how I was going to get it home as it was in Hawich and pretty big but by the time I had gotten back to the seller she said she had someone coming to view it on the Friday and would let me know on Saturday if it was still available. I thought that I would have to find another one, but luckily she got back to me and said it was still available (yay) so on the Monday my dad and boyfriend set off to pick it up (I wouldn’t be able to fit in the car as well) they had to make two trips as it wouldn’t fit in my dad’s Mondeo (even though we measured it..)

It wasn’t in the best condition as it had a lot of pen marks, glass was scratched and missing a label plate but for £50 it was a bargain.

(Cats having fun)

It’s been taking up space in the living room for 2 weeks, but on Thursday I got my friend Lorraine to pick it up in her truck and take it to uni. I tried to get the pen and paint off but most of it wasn’t coming off so I decided to sand the whole thing with my boyfriend. (It took a long time) I bought some new varnish for it in ‘antique pine’ colour.

Its not 100% perfectly sanded but better than it was.

Photo with the first coat of varnish. you can still see a few ink marks and pen marks but I think it adds a bit of character to it. Also decided to take all the label plates off. I may add handles or just leave it.

After the second coat. Will probably need 1 more coat

I got around to putting the last coat of stain on two of my boxes using my own wood stain that I made using steel wool and white vinegar. I made the mixture in October as I saw some good results of what it can do on Pinterest and I didn’t really want to go out and buy wood stain as it would be a waste of money because I would probably never use it again and more chemicals.

In a jar I poured in some white vinegar and broke some pieces of fine steel wool and put them in and that was it (no lid on the jar as there was a chance it could explode due to built up gasses, some tutorials say leave a lid on, some say don’t and I didn’t want to take any chances) and left it. Online I saw that after a few days the steel wool would disintegrate but mine took forever, at least a month but I read somewhere sometimes the steel wool can have a coating on and will take longer. the longer you leave it, the darker the stain will get, plus you get this lovely rustiness in the jar:

you can try it with apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, rusty nails to get different results. I found the longer I’ve left the stain the browner it got. you can also make it come out darker if you pre-stain the wood with tea as the stain reacts with the tannin in the wood and the tea adds more.

A few days ago I started another sketchbook, this time of Egyptian items that I have but this time, they are just quick sketches. I wanted them to be quick sketches as I spend too long on one drawing and I had quite a lot to draw.

A few months ago, I was struggling with finding artists to look at and I found this book in the library. Its about contemporary artists and having their work displayed and presented in a museum way. I found it easier to just put key points of each artist. these are just some that I found (and some that are not in the book)

some pictures of items when I went to the museum of Archaeoloy and Anthropology in Cambridge. Again, like at the Fitzwilliam museum, I was drawn to the small objects. On the top floor there were cabinets with just items, and no information just a label at the top of the cabinets. there was a sign about the items being there for storage or something, I forgot to take a photo of the sign and I can’t remember what it said.

this was one of the labels.

it makes you think what the items were used for and who they were used by…