Introducing: Samm (Aka Panda)

We at Craft Battles have a textile friend named Samm (Aka Panda) that's participated in the first two battles now. Since it appears she's going to be here for the long term, we decided we should introduce her! In the future some posts by her will probably pop up too.

Who is the Artist:

Hey all! My name is Samm, aka Panda. I’m a 19 years-old art student at OCAD in Toronto, where I also currently reside! I’m in my second year of Illustration, but I also like to sew plush toys and create sculpey creatures.

I’m a House Manager/Head Bitch at Campus Co-op, and I love my job! But I also love to draw, paint, sew, clean, eat (lots!), pandas, owls, animal crossing and ramen noodles. My favourite restaurant here in ye olde TO is currently Future Bakery and Café – they have some meaaaaannn apple pancakes.

Oh, and the family dog Maia is the love of my life (besides Mike) and her face is the inspiration behind much of my work:

 Goals:

My goals kind of change every 30 minutes. Some days I want to start a plushie company, some days I want to make awesome illustrations for people, and other days I want to work for a kick-ass design firm. Maybe become a tattoo artist! Or design furniture or vinyl toys. ANYWAYS you can see my list of potential goals is great and varied. Hopefully my time at OCAD will help me narrow down the list!

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02 Fantasy Battle Winner!

The results for the second craft battle are as follows:

Jessie (Nixie)	1 (25%)
Nikki (Dragon)	2 (50%)
Panda (Unicorn)	1 (25%)

Total Votes: 4

It looks as if Nikki has won by one whole vote! Unfortunately it doesn't feel much like a real win when there were only four votes total.

Nameless the Dragon

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Expansion

Today's mini-post is on the sculpture Expansion by Paige Bradley. [Website]

Doesn't this make you go, "What the hell is going on, this is awesome!"

The moment Jessie shared this photo with me a mad dash started to find more information on the sculpture. How were those cracks lit up? Were they lined with mirrors that were catching the light off the camera? That's what I thought anyway, because I assumed it was a solid stone sculpture, turns out it's actually hollow bronze!

Admittedly I think the cone of light takes away from the sculpture a bit.

The story, as it seems to go, is that Paige was having issues upon her arrival to Manhattan due to the curator's and critic's anti-figure stance. In a moment of what I would refer to as insanity, she took a beautiful wax that she had spent months working on and dropped it! I'm glad she did though, because what the sculpture would have been is nothing compared to what it is now. She cast the broken pieces separately and had someone help her patch them back together and rig lighting to run throughout the body. I can't imagine this concept making as perfect an impact with any pose other than one conveying a state of meditation of prayer. Maybe I'm just short sighted though? I wish she would do more of these sculptures, but if it were me I'd be afraid of playing the same tune twice.

I'm sure there is a very great moral behind this piece that I should be elaborating on, something to the extent of;
- Don't be afraid to REALLY push yourself
- Don't get attached to your art, if it breaks, it breaks
- When you've hit a dead end, do something crazy to pull yourself out of the funk

Do you have anything else to add to that list? I'm sure there's lots of advice to take from Expansion's story.

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10, 000 Hours!

Most everyone that I talk to knows about the '10,000 hours' rule, right? However I always find someone new who hasn't heard of this rule and this infographic lays out the information rather beautifully, so I thought I'd share it!

I have decided, as of reading this infographic actually, that I want to try to tailor this blog so it aids with the 7 cheat rules and can help people with the 5 pointers of deliberate practice! My rough draft goes as follows;

7 Cheats:
1) Get a coach
So far we have three regular artists battling/appearing on this blog, all of which use different medias and styles. That should help to offer a range of coach-able areas.

2) Surround yourself with like minded individuals.
We on this blog are definitely like minded but open when it comes to arts and crafts, so you can probably bond with us on some level.

3) Build expert habits.
Does the habit of creating a new and different sculpture every 13 days count as good? I think so.

4) Don't waste time on the small stuff.
We can't help you with this. We don't know what the 'small things' we shouldn't post about are, but we'll do our best!

5) Deliberately practice.
If you're honestly interested in the work you're doing, we're hoping Craft Battles will help people get some good practice in.

6) Teach others.
We're trying to teach you guys, so that helps us. If you'd like to try and teach others, feel free to submit some posts or tutorials to get your teacher-ball rolling. (Teacher-ball?)

7) Find someone to kick your butt if you fall off track.
We can't give you any penalties if you don't compete or keep on top of your art. However if you become a regular here we'll do our best to chew your ear off about it!


We'll do our best to help you with the seven cheats, but putting this blog aside, can you map out a way to accomplish each cheat on your own? I think it will be really helpful to have a game plan for those cheats, to keep you from counting down the hours from 10,000 and accidentally practicing yourself into a rut!

Also, yes if you didn't notice this post is a little more for us than it is for you guys, but if we can't tell you how we plan on offering artistic assistance, than we might not be doing things right.

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