First Brief – Image (Object) Part 2

The next brief was a follow up of the first ‘image’ brief. However there was a slight twist, we had to present something familiar within unfamiliar context. This part was no longer in pairs, so I chose not to use the caulking gun as my object. I started off by brainstorming my ideas as I find this useful to open my mind up and develop them further.

The six main points I came up with were:

• Clock (I thought of combining this with a cockerel as they are a natural alarm clock-this becomes a clockerel)
• Lightbulb (I took this quite literally and switched the light bulb with a flower bulb as both produce something.. bulb->light and bulb ->flower)
• Lipstick (I also took this literally as a lipstick should actually ‘stick’ your lips together)
• Wallpaper (As people stick a variety of wallpapers to their home walls I though as newspaper was also a paper, this could be used instead as a play on words)
• Pez sweet dispenser (Pez dispensers give children sweets but I thought in an adult world this could be like a self-medication dispenser)
• Egg cup (Lastly an eggcup, if taken literally would actually mean a cup made out of egg).

I chose to take the eggcup idea further and develop it.

I did some quick initial sketch ideas of cracked eggs as the cup with the egg as the saucer. I also brought in the teapot element but thought to include a chicken tea cosy or something similar to really draw in the ‘chicken and the egg’ theme also. I showed this to my teacher for approval of the idea, she said that the idea was good but she really wanted me to push it a lot further and experiment!

I went on to research some artists/designers that used eggs in their work. Dali was one of the artist I looked at:

Dali is an artist I have researched in the past therefore knew about his extensive use of eggs. I thought that researching his work would be relevant to this brief as the work we were to produce had a slight surrealist side to it. It appears that he uses a lot of cracked eggs to show some sort of ‘new life’ and a cracked egg producing something new is what I was incorporating into my work-it produced my new object in it’s new environment.

So I then experimented with making an actual cup made from egg but not digitally. I put two eggs in a cup and pushed down a cut plastic bottle just far enough so that it still had a base then taped it in place and left it in the freezer. I also took some photos of egg and cracked shell saucers to see which worked best.

I found that the cracked shell worked best as it created the most contrast and found that the eggcup and egg saucer would be too much and too the same. I wanted to incorporate every aspect of the ‘egg’.

I came up with this outcome:
This is the feedback I received:

“A nice/strange composition … I think it would be stronger if the image were cropped around the breakfast table, rather than a view of wider scene – other elements are a distracting…. and there’s lots to see (and understand) in the central / important area. Well done.”

I do agree with this – there is a lot happening on the table and I feel that I need to focus on that point more and neaten up some of the edges and smooth parts that join together. I’d also like to add a handle to the cup to make it more realistic. Hoping to make these changes over christmas!

I found this brief really interesting but it did take me quite a long time to think of an idea, which didn’t leave me with very much time to execute the project, therefore there are quite a few adjustments I need to make.