I finally graduated from something!!!!

Last Friday (August 6th) I graduated with a certificate in Art and Design from the USCAD program at the University of Saskatchewan! And now after 4 years and 2 different schools I finally have something to show for it! We had a graduating art show to finish up the program and my octopus chair made an appearance.

This was what my corner looked like.

The UP house was also there!

The Octopus chair got to graduate too!

My animation teacher/mentor James Clow stopped by! Kendall, Kirk and I were all students of his both at our old animation school and at USCAD.

The beast is finally finished!!!!

So I finally finished my octopus chair. It only took me about a year! It has been a very interesting and very time consuming project, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! A lady in one of the other sculpture classes actually told me that she had a dream about it one night...I just hope that it wasn't a nightmare...

So I forgot to put these in my other post, but here are my thumbnail sketches that I quickly did up before starting the massive project that was my chair. It all seemed much simpler on paper.

In the last post the octopus didn't have any eyes so I made it some out of halves of giant kinder surprise capsules. I then used little pieces of styrofoam to give it some angry eyebrows.

Once the eyebrows were finished I covered the entire head in the strips of muslin cloth and glue/water goo like I did the rest of the body.

Ta da!

So once I had the entire head/body covered in the cloth I bought a giant tub of clear super duper thick gel to help seal it and mask the appearance of the strips of cloth. It also made it look kind of shiny and slimy and like it had just come out of the water

Once I had given it a couple of coats and it had dried, I painted it bright magenta. It made it look slightly terrifying, but luckily it was only the base color. I tried airbrushing it first but soon realized that if I wanted to finish it sometime over the next few hundred years it would be better to just use acrylic paint with some gel mixed in. I have a very tiny airbrush...

I then painted the majority of the chair a reddish purpley color. I think that if I ever actually met an angry octopus it would be purple.

I went over the magenta that was left on the underside of the chair and tentacles with a slightly more pinkish red tone so that it wouldn't stand out quite as much, but you could still see that there was a difference in color.

Using some great spatter painting techniques I probably learned in kindergarten and a trusty dollarama toothbrush I 'spiced up' the octopus' skin so that it wouldn't just be a boring solid color.

But alas, the eyes were not yet finished! And how is an angry octopus chair supposed to look at you angrily without eyes?

So I painted them. And then took a very attractive picture of myself.

After I had put the eyes in I laughed for about 5 minutes because it looked utterly ridiculous. I was quite proud of myself.

But the chair was still missing something....

Tentacles!!!! Which were made of suction cups that I painted pink. It was a real 'treat' to try and find the holes that I had drilled earlier and try and force the suction cups into them and get them to stay...I had to put myself in some very interesting positions to get them all into each leg and I'm sure that anyone looking in a window must have wondered what the heck was going on.

Eventually I got them all in!

I gave it's eyes some highlights to give it bit more life, and then it was done!

I was pretty excited when it was all finally done! SO excited in fact that it was only when I had put it on a dolly and was trying to get it out the door that I realised that I had made it slightly bigger than the doorway...Luckily, with some creative maneuvering and some help from my mom, we got it out and into the back of my dad's van where it could stare at people out the back window as we drove it home. It is now being stored in my family room under some towels and a tarp because we have a dog that really likes to pee on our belongings...And there it shall stay until my graduating art show at the beginning of August! How exciting!

Oh, and did I mention that it's eyes light up....How awesome is that?!

Octopus Chair

Ok, so this is a project that I've been working on for what seems like a million bajillion years. I started it during my sculpture class, but it was a way bigger project than I expected and wasn't able to finish it during the class. I'm not entirely sure where the idea to create an octopus chair came from but I'm kind of glad that once it's finished it will be both ridiculous and functional!

So this is the chair that I started from. And I know what everyone is thinking, "But Erica, that chair is so dazzling and stunning on it's own. Why would you ever want to cover it up with an octopus?!" And let me tell you it wasn't easy to cover up the majesty that was this chair. Especially since it reminded me of something that you would see on my grandmas patio...But sacrifices must be made for the sake of art!

I started by taking thin sheets of styrofoam and covering the back and seat of the chair. I used water based rubber cement to get it to stick together.


I shaped the legs out of sheets of wire mesh and learned very quickly that gloves were kind of the best things ever. Unfortunately this was after my hands were bleeding quite a bit...

I made some arms out of the wire mesh and attached them to the chair with more wire. I also added some more styrofoam to the front of the chair to make the basic form of the face.

After I had built and attached all of the legs I used duct tape to cover the especially sharp and poky bits if wire and then I used strips of muslin in a kind of paper mache fashion to cover them. I used a mixture of white glue and water instead of paper mache paste though.

I rounded out the back of the head with more sheets of styrofoam and sanded and filed down the edges to make in not quite as square. There was so much styrofoam on me it looked like I had been snowed on. Or just had like the worst case of dandruff the world has ever seen.

I drilled holes on the underside of the arms and legs and put little suction cups in them. Because really, what's an octopus chair without suction cups?!

I started covering the arms and legs with a coat of yellow gel medium to try and hide the strips of muslin to make it look less paper mache-y.

I rounded out the head a little more by cutting tiny pieces of styrofoam and hot gluing them around the sides kind of like an igloo.

And this is what it looks like so far! Hopefully I can finish this beast soon!