In October 2018 we were in Vancouver for a few months and were sketching for the Inktober challenge. We used Ghibli as one of the prompts and created this drawing.
later on we painted it nicely and changed the design just a bit to make it more Creepy/Cute (how crunchy of us). When we came up with our game atommix, we chose this drawing to represent chemical element number 1 = Hydrogen ❤️.
In Feb 2019 we were invited to paint a mural at Envision Festival in Costa Rica. We felt it was a good opportunity to live paint a mural of Hydrogen, especially in that hot weather.
And there she was, gracing (and spooking) the festival along with some other sweet murals. This was our first atommix mural and another stepping stone for creating the game. The mural and the game brought us closer to finalizing the design. The golden diamond shape in the background represents matter and the element of Hydrogen is the first building block of physical matter.
In our 5 years of nomadic traveling we created dozens of murals, drawings and digital work, however we had a burning urge to sculpt and bring our characters to 3D life !
During the process of creating our art, we try to envision how we wish our projects to form. If we have suggested an idea we both like - that means it’s on our ‘To Do List’. In the past year (2020-21), we took advantage of the isolation lockdown as an opportunity to cave in and go 3D.
Finally we have relocated to Vancouver and we have much more access to the proper materials to sculpt, cast and mold Hydrogen (accompanied by the water dragon of course!). In order to manifest it the way we envisioned, it had to be created with the least amounts of waste, and as eco friendly as possible. We had thought of 3d printing or carving it out of wood but we felt it would be the sweetest to sculpt it from non drying clay to have the most control over the details and to potentially reuse the materials afterwards. Also, we're trying to avoid sitting in front of machines all day. In the past few months we’ve been building up the sculpture and it will soon be finalized. In order to prepare for it, we started researching and testing materials we’ll be using, like rubber silicone molds. We call it "The Chocolate Test" :
The molds we created from silicone got us wanting to use it to cast Crunchy Chocolates - it's an amazing and easy material to work with. And it's super biodegradable too! 🥳.
This sculpture contains a generous amount of our love and energy and a big part of our journey so far. It takes a lot to actually DO the mold by covering the whole thing with the drippy silicone, but we must have faith in the process! Especially after some trial and error.
When creating a sculpture we try to consider the placement and weight distribution as well as figuring out how we can make it even more magical.
Very happy to finally share this process and it shall be continued...
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