Zenith – Deepa Bala

In Freestyle, we have a final project in our elective classes known as the Zenith project. The point of the project is to explore whatever skill we wanted to, as long as it related to our electives.

Last year, for Explorations, I made a small clay sculpture, and really enjoyed the process. As a result, I decided to do a larger, more detailed sculpture, and decided on sculpting a dragon sitting among some rocks, as I have been a large fan of dragons since elementary school. I decided to go with golden and brown for the dragon’s colors so that it could have an earthy, rocky feeling.

A huge problem I encountered during this project was that I didn’t add enough support to the base of the dragon, so appendages unfortunately kept on breaking, and I would have to reattach them with hot glue or clay. This taught me to be more mindful of how heavy clay can be, weighing down parts of the sculpture to the point of them snapping. Despite the hardships of this project, I still love sculpting and want to do more with it in the future. However, I will probably do a simpler shape, or smaller size, so the structure is guaranteed to be more sturdy.

Here is an audio reflecting on my Zenith Project: