15. Butterflies - 1 & 2

I sourced two butterflies from an ethical source to experiment with.

I used a macro lens to capture the small details of the insects because I was interested in the organic patterns in their wings and bodies.

Butterfly 1:

The butterflies were shockingly delicate. For example, the striped butterfly fell apart whilst I was moving it from one place to another in the same room.

I had originally planned to grow crystals on the butterfly like I had on the wasp, but realising how delicate it was made it obvious to me that this was not possible.

The wings were incredibly frail and would not withstand being submerged in water.

I decided to return to the ideas I explored when experimenting with leaves.

The wings of the butterfly were now as delicate as thin leaves. Also, they were not water resistant, which made them even more delicate.

I decided to return to the idea of "artificial" crystallisation.

I sourced some decorative foils usually used for nail art.

This image was taken with a macro lens to show the fine details of the form.

I enjoyed the reflective, artificial colours as well as the geometric shapes.

I envisioned a sharp juxtaposition between the organic patterns of the butterfly alongside the artificial, geometric shapes of the foil.

Foils are traditionally applied using a special glue, which I did not have.

I experimented with PVA glue and blue foil on a piece of thin paper to make sure that it would work as intended.

I was reassured by the fact that the foil worked on delicate paper without damaging it, because I did not want it to damage the butterfly wing.

I covered the wing in an thin layer of foil glue before applying it to the foil. I applied the wing to the foil rather than the other way around, because the wing is much more delicate than the foil, and it is also much smaller.

I waited for the glue to dry (2-3 minutes) and attempted to peel the foil away from the wing.

It did not work. Instead, the foil peeled away part of the wing.

I assume that this is due to the thin layer of powder that sits ontop of butterfly wings.

The foil ripped away from the wing itself and left it looking transparent in some places, as you can see in the images above.

I thought that I must not have left the glue long enough to dry, so I tried the same technique again.

(1. I used a thin layer of glue to apply the wing to the foil

2. Waited 3 or 4 minutes

3. Delicately remove the foil from the wing)

The same thing happened, although with much more gravity this time.

The wing began to become completely transparent in some places.

The wing was still completely intact, but the colour was being stripped from it. This left the bare structure of the wing behind, which was very similar to paper thin plastic.

The transparent windows gave a stained glass window effect in some lighting.

I tried 2 or 3 more times with the same effect, which did nothing but rip away more, and more and more of the wing until it was practically transparent apart from the dark stripes.

Since the nail foil is traditionally intended for nail art, I decided to use nail polish instead and see if that made a difference.

It didn't make much of a difference in stickiness, but it gave an interesting affect when reapplied to the foil. The colours of the foil are amplified by the polish, as seen below.

In the image above, you can see dark patches of "powder" from the wing on other parts of the foil.

These powders came directly from the wing and stuck to the glue.

I found this effect very interesting because of the stark contrast between the natural textures of the wing, and the vivid colours/geometric textures of the foil underneath.

I tried ONE MORE time.

At this point the wing was battered and torn, but I managed to transfer a tiny fraction of the foil.

Great.

These images were taken with a macro lens.

At this point I abandoned all hope of a clean transfer and referred back to the effect given by nail polish and foil.

I used nail polish to fix the wing onto the BACK of the foil (the colourful side), and let it dry permanently.

Then, instead of removing the wing or the foil, I carefully cut around the wing.

This was beneficial in multiple ways. The colour was vivid and unbroken, and the thin plastic added a little bit of stability to the frail wing.

 At this point it no longer looked like a butterfly wing.

I used a macro lens to capture some interesting images of the wing under direct lighting.

The lighting brought out the colours of the foil. The transparency of the wing meant that the colours shone through very noticeably.

I am thrilled by the contrast between natural and geometric pattern.

I love that you can still see the skeleton of the butterfly wing, as well as the dark stripes.

If you look hard enough you can see organic, natural shapes on top of the sharp, futuristic shapes.

I accidentally took this photograph whilst my camera was out of focus, which gave it a "bokeh" effect.

This meant that the subject was no longer recognisable, but all of the light reflecting from the wing was caught by the lens to create a "bokeh" effect.

I love how the image softens every sharp feature of the wing. It looks more natural and organic, due to the involuntary effect of the light.

It is another interesting take on natural/unnatural patterns, because the "bokeh" effect is natural in the fact that it is a trick of the light, but it was captured by a digital device.

I repeated the entire process of adding foil onto a wing ATTACHED to the butterfly, and then assembled the 3 severed pieces of butterfly to take a photograph.

Altogether, the butterfly is recognisable as a butterfly, whereas the severed wings are more difficult to recognise alone.

I love that there appears to be a 50/50 split between what is real and what is not. 2/4 wings are altered by foil, although they are immersed in and amongst what is natural. I especially love the effect of the foil on the wing that is still attached to the butterfly's body, because it seems that there is a clean gradient fade between the foil and the natural opaque wing.

I wanted to take a better composed photograph of this piece, as plain paper did not seem to do it justice (also, I could not handle the wings without smearing powder all over the paper, which ruined the effect.)

When growing crystals previously, I often used plastic cups as receptacles.

The borax often settled to the bottom of the plastic cup, resulting in a solid crystal base.

I found this interesting, so I cut away the rest of the plastic cup and used a lighter flame to soften the sharp edges of the plastic left behind. This left a beautiful, perfectly circular plate of crystals.

They are the perfect size to hold the butterflies, so I experimented.

I mounted the 3 pieces of my butterfly onto a crystal plate. This is a plate identical to the white one shown above, only this one was created in a cup with a drop of blue food colouring in it (the borax crystals absorbed the colour.)

I think the slight blue tinge is effective, as the cool blue contrasts with the warm yellow.

The piece was difficult to photograph so I began to experiment with digital editing in order to improve it.

I felt that the white background was very crisp and effective in displaying the subject, but I enjoyed how the black background abstracted the piece, making it appear to be floating in space.

The spherical plate looks like a moon on a black background, which makes the entire image seem that bit more surreal.

I decided to work with the "surreal" theme by making the colours slightly more unnatural.

I did this by using a "hue and saturation" tool on Paint Tool SAI. The "hue" bar simultaneously adjusts every hue in the image proportionately.

I chose to alter the colours in this way to play with the idea of "space" and thus "alien" themes.

Not only this, but I think that it is effective in abstracting the image and making it difficult to decipher what is real and what is not. In regular colours, the viewers could easily tell that some parts of the butterfly were real and some were not. Now, it is difficult to tell if any of it is real at all.

Below, the colours are amplified further. It is becoming harder and harder to decipher what is real.

I also experimented with removing ALL colour from the image.

I think that this is interesting because the lack of colour allows you to focus solely on texture. This makes it easy to tell what is natural, and what might not be - but you cannot be sure, because colours are usually a great indicator of natural and unnatural.

Below, I took the experimentation much further.

The image below is an image I have taken with a macro lens of a crystal plate.

Here is a step by step image explanation of how I created an abstract effect.

1. Source an image

2. Place it on a layer separate to your original image

3. Adjust the image to your liking

4. Use an eraser to remove the parts of the image that you do not wish to be directly effected.

5. Use the "mode" tool to change the layer effects to "overlay"

6. The images above will project their textures onto the image below, giving the effect of transparent crystals floating on top of it.

The final product is below.

I also experimented with other colours, to add to the surrealism. I think that this effect is very interesting, but perhaps slightly overkill. I find that it distracts from the textures on the wings themselves, which are the most interesting features.

REFLECTION:

1): What did I do?

I experimented with the carcass of a butterfly, by using foils to create the effect of crystallisation without manufacturing any genuine crystals. 

2): Why did I do it?

I experimented with artificial crystallisation because the wings of the butterfly were incredibly fragile, too fragile to grow crystals onto as the water alone would probably cause the wings to disintegrate, let alone the weight of the crystals on top of them.

The foils created an interesting effect without the need of weight, chemicals or liquid.

3). What did I learn?

I learnt that butterfly wings are far too delicate and small to work with on the scale that I intended to, but I also learnt the importance of working with the materials that you have. I learnt that creativity can get you a long way with minimal materials, e.g, in this case I used a material that I never intended to use, but simply came across and found inspiration through (nail foils).

4). What would I have done differently?

Nothing. I may have made many "mistakes" in the process of creating this piece/this series of photographs, but without the mistakes I made I would not have resulted with the same piece in the end. I did not intend to rip the wings or strip the powder from it, but the fact that I did that made it so that I could create much more interesting textures in the end.

5). Pros + Cons

Pros:

There is an interesting and beautiful contrast between the natural and unnatural, aka the organic patterns of the butterfly/crystals in juxtaposition to the sharp, colourful geometric patterns of the foils. It is difficult to tell what is real and what is not as the differences are seamless in places.

Cons:

The butterfly is VERY delicate. In fact, whilst I am writing this, the sculpture itself has already begun to disintegrate. The bottom left wing was incredibly delicate and began to tear and break away, meaning that it can no longer be displayed as an identical counterpart to the photographs above. It is lucky that I took photographs before it began to break, as it is just that delicate, and there was no way to preserve it without damaging features of the sculpture meanwhile.

Also, it is very small. The entire sculpture is the same size as the bottom of your average plastic cup, so it would have been an incredibly small sculpture that would have been difficult to display.

6). Evaluation

I am pleased with this sculpture and series of photographs as a pair. I especially enjoy the fact that the photographs are difficult to decipher. It is difficult to tell what is real and what is not, because of the photo editing. I think that that is a lot of fun, and evokes questions from the viewers of the photographs as well as the rest of my sculptures. I feel that most of my pieces are difficult to "decipher", proven by the fact that most of my viewers need to ASK me if it's real or not.

I think that I could probably use this to my advantage. Since everything that I have created so far APPEARS unreal but IS real, I wonder if I could convince my audience into thinking that something that IS NOT real, IS real. That is an interesting thought that I may play with later on. Perhaps I am already playing with that, by recolouring some of the photographs in the way that I have.

Butterfly 2:

For this butterfly, I wanted to return to the process of crystal growing.

For some reason this butterfly seemed to be much more sturdy and durable. Because of this, I thought that it would be hardy enough to withstand being submerged in water and withstand the weight of crystals on top of it.

I wanted to use alum crystals to "encase" the butterfly in crystals much like how I encased the leaves in small transparent alum crystals beforehand.

Although, instead of using CLEAR alum, I planned to experiment with chromium alum.

Chromium alum is supposed to give pigment to alum in order to create crystals with this colour.

https://www.thoughtco.com/growing-purple-chromium-alum-crystals-607662

Although, instead of creating large solid crystals like the one above, I wanted to create a scattered series of smaller crystals like the ones on the leaf above. I wanted it to look like amethyst (see below.)

By JJ Harrison (jjharrison89@facebook.com) CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7515666

I sourced some Chromium Alum as seen below.

It was a gorgeous colour. I took a macro lens image of the freshly opened jar.

Strangely, the substance changed colour when mixed with water. See above. It was more of a green when mixed with warm water. It was difficult to capture on camera, so I attempted to back light it with a torch.

I wanted to experiment with the chromium alum on something else before using the butterfly.

I severed a flower from the bunch below and suspended it in the liquid for 4 days.

I found it interesting how the top of the liquid gained iridescent qualities. Almost like an oil spill.

4 days later nothing had happened. I realised my mistake:

The chromium alum did not contain enough alum to crystallise. If I wanted crystals to form, I would have to add chromium alum to a solution already saturated with alum. The chromium alum would be more of a pigment than a base for crystal growing.

I added an entire packet of alum (around 100g) to the already saturated chromium alum solution. I assumed that this would be enough, and took a risk by immediately submerging the butterfly into it instead of carrying out any more tests beforehand.

The butterfly was incredibly lightweight and buoyant, so I tied a coin and seashell to the bottom of the string to weigh the butterfly down and hold it under the water. 

I left the solution at least 10 days. I wanted to be sure that the crystals would form, since last time, 4 days was not enough.

I was shocked by what I revealed.

The crystals were not small and fine. They had grown to magnificent sizes.

The colours were incredible. I was thrilled with the outcome of the crystals, regardless of the fact that they were not what I was going for at all.

I learnt at this point that the longer you allow the alum crystals to sit, the bigger they grow.

Whereas with borax, the borax crystals grow to a certain size and then remain that way.

I was very shocked by the size of these crystals. They are also very durable and hard, not delicate like smaller crystals.

The butterfly itself had not been touched at all by the crystals. The alum crystals specifically clung to the fibres of the string, the coin, and the shell. This was a little bit frustrating, but at this point I found that the art was in the crystals themselves, not the butterfly.

Below is some photography of the crystals. They were very small, so I felt that photography was necessary in order to highlight the colours and small details of each crystal.

Strangely, in some lighting, the crystals appeared to change colour. Here, they appear more of a blue shade of purple.

As inspired by Damien Hirst's diamond cabinets, I decided to place these crystals onto a mirror.

The effect was interesting, but I thought that it would look much better stood upright. I used hot glue to affix them to the mirror. The mirror was a stick-on square usually designed for bathroom tiles. I stuck it directly onto a piece of square wood for stability.

Although the sculpture does not compare to Damien Hirst's diamond cabinets, I am still pleased with the effect that it gives. It appears that there are a whole new series of crystals beyond a piece of glass. I enjoy the symmetry, as well as the vivid colours.

The mirror itself is only a thin piece of plastic, so it appears to have warped in some places. It may appear to be a flaw, but I think that it is interesting to see how the light organically warps.

I used digital art to edit the image into an image more presentable. I digitally removed the crystals from the mirror, and instead placed them onto an artificial mirror background. You can barely tell the difference.

This digital manipulation allowed me to experiment and make the image bigger, and more intricate, with more crystals.

Next, I attempted to make a piece inspired by Hirst's cabinets. A long image, using many symmetrical crystals.

I enjoy the kaleidoscope effect.

Although, I felt that the image was more effective with less crystals. I think that the image is more interesting with less symmetry, and more organic, random placement.

These crystals are not finely cut like Hirst's cubic zirconia. They are imperfect and organically formed, so I think it is agreeable that they should be placed accordingly.

I used photomanipulation to remove the colour from the crystals, in order to make them resemble diamonds (or cubic zirconia).

I think that it is difficult to tell that they are not real crystals at all. I think that they resemble herkimer diamonds in this image. See below.

Herkimer Diamonds (NOT MY IMAGE)

Taken from

http://footprint2africa.com/topics/mining/tanzania-petra-diamonds-given-permission-resume/

EVALUATION:

What did I learn?:

I learned how to grow coloured alum crystals effectively. I discovered that it is important to keep a close eye on the crystals as they are growing, else they may grow far bigger than you intended. Although, this may not always be a bad thing. I found that the fact that they grew incredibly large was a blessing rather than a curse.

PROS + CONS:

Pros: The crystals are an incredible colour. They were cheap to create, and required only a little bit of patience.

They are durable, strong and interesting to view.

They hold an interesting pattern when viewed closely, due to the organic formation.

They are geometrically shaped, but completely organic. They are perhaps my new favourite of the crystals that I have grown so far. I would like to grow more if I ever discover an opportunity to do so.

The digital editing that I used opened a new realm of opportunities that made the mirror idea seem much clearer and much more professional.

Cons: They are small, and difficult to present. The mirror that they have been glued to is nowhere near as perfectly flat and shiny as Hirst's diamond cabinets. Funds were an issue in sourcing a proper mirror, let alone a cabinet to display them in. I do not think that this is the end of the world. I think that although there are mistakes, they add character to my individual piece.

The digital editing that I employed is not "real". It cannot be viewed in person, only on a screen or a print. This may take away some of the effect. I will display it as a print alongside the original piece as to allow the viewer to visually compare.

Evaluating and Comparing to Hirst's diamond cabinets:

The sculpture:

The physical sculpture I have created holds many differences to Hirst's cabinets. For a start, my piece is on a flat piece of wood, rather than glass in a cabinet. The effects of the pieces artistically are polar opposites. Hirst's piece is clinically "perfect", with pristine, flat glass, perfectly cut cubic zirconia and straight rows/shelves. It screams wealth, perfectionism and skill.

My piece, on the other hand, is rough around the edges in every aspect. The crystals are organically grown and chipped in some places. The colour, although natural, is not a colour that evokes feelings of wealth or preciousness.

The stones are not precious and do not pretend to be, making them much more relatable to the common viewer. The colour purple is soothing and calming, whereas the imperfect edges remove the pressure of the sculpture being worth more than the viewer (whereas Hirst's sculpture is worth more than the average viewer's house - it sold for £2.5 million.).

They are not hugely reflective or shiny, meaning they do not relate to the mirror at all. They stand out ontop of the mirror instead of blending into it, giving it a surreal edge, as the mirror does not seem to fit. It is especially surreal due to the fact that the mirror is vertical, so that the crystals appear to be floating. I enjoy this effect and enjoy the idea that it would cause viewers to question it.

The digital art:

The digital version of this piece is different from Hirst's piece from the word GO because it is not 3D. It is 2D and can only be viewed from a single angle, where Hirst's piece can be viewed from multiple angles, and the light can reflect accordingly to add to the piece.

Despite this, I enjoy the effect of the digital piece because of the depth that has been captured, without the use of a real mirror at all. This is not a photograph of a mirror, and some of the crystals do not even exist. They are duplicates of other crystals, but viewers would be none the wiser unless they looked very closely. I enjoy the factor of illusion that goes on behind this image.

I enjoy the fact that the crystals initially appear to be floating, but as the viewers look closer, we can see clearly that the crystals are reflected into themselves. On first glance it is difficult to tell what is happening. The mirror could be mistaken for a water reflection, or it could be argued that there are just 2 crystals attached to eachother, and that no reflection is taking place.

I enjoy the surreal qualities of the digital piece. I appreciate that a single printed photomanipulation will not have the same effect as a genuine crystal cabinet sculpture, but when viewed on my blog, viewers are none the wiser.