Designing my Medusa Orrery. (And a look at snakes!)

((stuff here))

After looking into images of Medusa I remembered I took a load of photos from when we visited Sony Guerilla Studios, when our group were waiting for our session at the studio we went to the Fitzwilliam Museum. During the visit there were plenty of marble and stone statues that really visually pleased me so I snapped them from all angles to see if I could paint them later (how happy I am now I am going to be painting marble!)

I thought I would have a go at sketching out a few ideas from my mini brainstorming session with Maxine, I'm not sure whether the snakes would move or whether it would just be a stationary object so I tried drawing both. I also like the idea of the statue holding the Sun, as this would have been the most stable and bright object to Grecian peoples eyes, this should be represented as being held steady. I would also like to have at least one of the snakes broken off and maybe shown laying on the ground to show some wear and age to the statue. I also am not sure whether it would be a whole statue, or just a bust as shown in the first two sketches. I would love to give her gems for eyes to maybe represent how the eyes look when she is turning people into stone.

This is the idea for a non moving Orrery just for decorative purposes.

These drawings are me looking into the possibilities of it being a full-bodied statue instead of a bust, along with a quick top view. The last image shows the bow and arrow that the Medusa is sometimes shown with. I'm not sure I want to keep with that idea as it takes away hands that I could use to pose with or hold spheres for planets.

I thought if I was going to maybe do a snake body I'd need to understand a little about snake bodies and how they look when they rear up into a defensive posture.

Looking into Ancient Greece.

So, obviously if you don't know about a place, you do some research, that's where I begin my Orrery crusade. For this I'm not so much looking at the people as I am making an object and as such don't really need to delve too much into this side, however I will be looking into some clothing, the art and astrology to create my Orrery. Here is some small information on Ancient Greece.

"Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity (c. 600 AD). Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in ancient Greece is the period of Classical Greece, which flourished during the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Classical Greece began with the repelling of a Persian invasion by Athenian leadership. Because of conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the western end of the Mediterranean Sea.Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of the Mediterranean Basin and Europe. For this reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered as the cradle of Western civilization."

And some info on the art and sculpture!

"The art of Ancient Greece is usually divided stylistically into four periods: the Geometric, Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic. The Geometric age is usually dated from about 1000 BC, although in reality little is known about art in Greece during the preceding 200 years (traditionally known as the Greek Dark Ages), the period of the 7th century BC witnessed the slow development of the Archaic style as exemplified by the black-figure style of vase painting. The onset of the Persian Wars (480 BC to 448 BC) is usually taken as the dividing line between the Archaic and the Classical periods, and the reign of Alexander the Great (336 BC to 323 BC) is taken as separating the Classical from the Hellenistic periods.

Ancient Greek sculpture is the sculpture of Ancient Greece. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages. They were used to depict the battles, mythology, and rulers of the land known as Ancient Greece. 

Ancient Greek monumental sculpture was composed almost entirely of marble or bronze; with cast bronze becoming the favoured medium for major works by the early 5th century; many pieces of sculpture known only in marble copies made for the Roman market were originally made in bronze. Smaller works were in a great variety of materials, many of them precious, with a very large production of terracotta figurines. The territories of ancient Greece, except for Sicily and southern Italy, contained abundant supplies of fine marble, with Pentelic and Parian marble the most highly prized, along with that from modern Prilep in Macedonia, and various sources in modern Turkey. The ores for bronze were also relatively easy to obtain. Marble was mostly found around the Parthenon and other major Greek buildings. 

Both marble and bronze are fortunately easy to form and very durable; as in most ancient cultures there were no doubt also traditions of sculpture in wood about which we know very little, other than acrolithic sculptures, usually large, with the head and exposed flesh parts in marble but the clothed parts in wood. As bronze always had a significant scrap value very few original bronzes have survived, though in recent years marine archaeology or trawling has added a few spectacular finds, such as the Artemision Bronze and Riace bronzes, which have significantly extended modern understanding. Many copies of the Roman period are marble versions of works originally in bronze. Ordinary limestone was used in the Archaic period, but thereafter, except in areas of modern Italy with no local marble, only for architectural sculpture and decoration. Plaster or stucco was sometimes used for the hair only. Chryselephantine sculptures, used for temple cult images and luxury works, used gold, most often in leaf form and ivory for all or parts (faces and hands) of the figure, and probably gems and other materials, but were much less common, and only fragments have survived. Many statues were given jewellery, as can be seen from the holes for attaching it, and held weapons or other objects in different materials."

As I'm thinking about creating a statue for my orrery to stand on rather than just a plinth for a small object to sit on, I think this could look nicer especially as I'm going with a Medusa theme, she is often depicted as having a snake body, I think this could make for the stand and her head obviously as the main Orrery devise. I don't really understand the way snakes bodies work so if I do want to do a snake body instead of a plinth, I will have to do a bit of research on snakes and see which snake will make the best model.

Tackling task two!

Our next task (that was actually set on the 05/10/2015 whoops) we were given the word Orrery!

*crickets chirp in my head*

I had actually never heard the term Orrery before ... So I had to look it up, thank the lord for Google!

"An orrery is a mechanical model of the solar system that illustrates or predicts the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons, usually according to the heliocentric model. It may also represent the relative sizes of these bodies; but since accurate scaling is often not practical due to the actual large ratio differences, a subdued approximation may be used instead. Though the Greeks had working planetaria, the first orrery that was a planetarium of the modern era was produced in 1704, and one was presented to Charles Boyle, 4th Earl of Orrery — whence came the name. They are typically driven by a clockwork mechanism with a globe representing the Sun at the centre, and with a planet at the end of each of the arms." - wikipedia.

Unlike the insect task brief, this one was not as brief, we were given a little more information

"Concept Art:

Design an Orrery. Submit: Iteration / development PDF Final Concept (300dpi) Model sheets (Inc. material analysis and photographic reference)"

I have to admit I done so well with the last task that I feel bad that I'm not so on the ball with this one. I'm going to be taking the same path as with the first task, but working to the requests listed above. Last task I went cultural and tried a style I'd not tried before, this time I'd like to do the same again. Here is a collection of images to start the creative process!

Whilst pondering my ideas I noted a few things with my classmate Maxine down in my notepad as we both felt we needed to help each other figure out what we were going to do ...

(Excuse the doodle, me and Maxine were trying to work out, what someone would look like with a chimney on her. #howtogetcreativejuicesflowing)

For me I want to either go down the Roman or Greek route, I'm leaning more toward Greek though, especially with the mythology surrounding these cultures, also its the era of Archimedes who was a great inventor and Astronomer, I showed these ideas to my tutor Mark and he liked the idea of creating an Orrery from this time period and suggested I look into how people from this time viewed space, and how many planets they were aware of at that time, so my Orrery could look very different and unique in comparison to other people.

I admitted to Mark that both me and Maxine were a bit overwhelmed by our work at this stage, it always feels massively scary to admit that you are a bit in over your head but it felt good to say it. Mark explained a few things about doing researching and stopping ourselves from getting bogged down, he suggested we do a little bit of research, then implement that and do some creative work, then learn from that creative work and apply that to the next stage of research. I have to admit I'm of the do loads of research and then apply that and create, might have to start unlearning that and get into a new mindset with my creative process.

I really like the idea of going back in time for this task, as with the last task its a culture I've never really focused on before and I've always been interested in myths and weird stuff so .... now to start mood boarding and creating!