Mannequin VS Drill

Original Mannequin ^

I used a drill to begin creating holes in the head of my mannequin.
It was surprisingly easy to piece through with a decent drill head.

I continued this until the entirety of the head was covered in holes.
I varied the hole size slightly as I wasn't sure of how big the flowers I was planning to use would be.

I then sourced some flowers from a friend to do a test run.
I placed the stems of the flowers into the holes, as deeply as I could.
It turns out that the mannequin head was fill to the brim with expanding foam, so it was very difficult to pierce it with the weak stems. 

I found that this effect was almost comical.
The fact that another student was using these flowers in her art meant that I could not alter them.
If I had the opportunity, I would have cut them much shorter in order to have the flowers blooming closer to her head.
It's too obvious here that the flowers have been stuck into her head. I would like to create the illusion that flowers are growing OUT of her head rather than the alternative.

I still find the imagery here very interesting. It is a good start but I have very far to go.

I also added some leaves to the holes, which I had pressed myself between two boards the night before.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The bottom of the mannequin was solid, but with a plug that enabled you to put the mannequin on a pole/fitting, if you were using it for its intended purpose.

Once I removed it, I saw that the entire thing was flooded with expanding foam.
I worked hard with my hands and other tools to remove as much of it as I could, whilst leaving enough in there to keep the mannequin weighted. I also had to gouge a large hole into the top of the mannequin's head, to allow me to remove the foam from the head. Once I had, I saw it as an opportunity to place a torch inside its head. For experimental purposes.

This image was taken when only a small amount of the expanding foam had been removed. The light is much duller, as the foam is not very conductive to light.

Once I had removed much more of the foam, the head lit up a thousand times better.
I am not yet sure whether I wish to incorporate light into this sculpture, but it was an interesting experiment nonetheless.

She looked much more alive with the wig on.

I started trying to poke flowers into the holes in the head, through the netting of the wig. It turned out that the flower stems were far too thick, so I made some small holes in the wig's netting with a blade.

I limited the amount of flowers I added at this stage because I didn't want to completely destroy the wig.

I enjoy this image. I like how the leaves are scattered through the hair as if she had been caught in a breeze.

I captured it in an acrylic painting.

I made the skintone monotone black and white, to allow the colourful flowers to capture the eye of the viewer. I feel that it works well.



After further experimentation with the flowers and wig, I decided that it would be very difficult to use a wig AND flowers without destroying the wig in the process.

So perhaps I'll just go without a wig, because it looks pleasantly surreal that way anyway.