We were given an assignment to look at different insects and use the mechanics that made them up to make our own. We were to make it out of black wire. I really loved the beetles that I kept seeing that had a chevron or striped design on their bodies. I loved all the different horn variations. I knew I wanted my beetle to have wings, and for some reason I really wanted to incorporate some part of a frog.
This is the base of my insect (which was a requirement that the body had to sit on the legs. I thought it would be easy to make a more round circular base and attach the legs to it. My legs were pretty flimsy so I ended up remaking the base to also have its own legs. I then attached my first legs to those since I felt the shape of them were really bug-ish.
I wanted it to be as sturdy as possible so I wrapped a few pieces horizontally around the base and then just got a little carried away in the wrapping process. I really like how this base in itself imitates its own bug.
For the horn I made a half moon that broke in the middle into the very wide c shape. I did this out of thick wire. I knew I wanted this to be one of the main focal points of my insect, so I wrapped the half moon in small wire and the horn in my thick wire. (that was very difficult to do it so tightly with such thick wire) For my eyes I tried a few different things until I settled on these guys. Nothing worked with the balance until the “frog!” jumped in my head. It for sure took a little bit to get the shape going as each eye is made up of one long piece of wire. Again I used the thick wire to keep the weight here. I really just wrapped it over itself until I felt they were big enough and then attached them to the half moon with the small wire.
For the body, I really was set on the idea that I wanted to do some sort of striping work that I had seen on so many cool beetles. I was really torn on this because I loved it so much, but knew that I. didn’t want to take away from the face and horn. So I decided on a simple gesture or implication of the design. I wanted to keep the same shapes, for a better overall composition. I made three individual half moon shapes from thicker wire, one being slightly bigger and taller than the other two. This was so you could get the round effect of the body. I used thin wire on the bottom and connected them all together that way.
When I looked at the piece together I felt like something was missing, So I again did another half moon with elongated c shape and added a stinger to the bottom of the body. I used the same method, thick wire for the shape, thin wire wrapping for the sides and again thick wire wrapping for the stinger.
We had talked a lot about wings in class. I knew that most people would want to incorporate them into their insects as well. I looked at lots of winged insects and saw all the intricate veins and details in them. I knew my piece already had a lot going on wire wise, it was pretty bulky and had wires going in lots of different directions. I didn’t want to complicate it. I wanted viewers to be able to see each individual piece when looking at it all at once. Professor Alembik talked about how she loves wire as it really reminds her of sketching. This really stuck with me. I started thinking how would I draw a wing in motion? So I took that and made three loops with one piece of wire, kinda pulled and twisted them a little and, viola! I used my thicker wire for the actual wings themselves and attached with thin wire.
