Introduction
For our last project at Freestyle, we have our Zenith Project. The point of this project was to get us to learn something new that we have been wanting to try. The zenith is the high point which makes sense for this project because this is the high point in our Freestyle education. We have now learned everything we will learn here and this is our chance to use it on our own.
For my Zenith project, I decided to learn how to wood burn. I have been wanting to try using a cane in addition to my crutches and one of my friends mentioned that I should customize it and add decorations. I thought this was a really fun idea so I decided to turn it into my Zenith project. I found some pictures on Pinterest of customized canes that I liked and created a mood board with a collection of ones that I liked.
I decided that I wanted to do a nature theme and found some patterns and designs that I liked. I wanted to included vines, leaves, flowers, and moths. I created on Adobe Illustrator a plan of how I would position these designs on the cane. My idea was to print this out and use transfer paper to put the designs directly on the cane for while I was burning, however, the cane was too dark and it would not show up so I had to resort to free handing it. Because of this, I spent a lot of extra time practicing until I felt confident enough to begin working on the actual cane.
One problem that I faced with this project was that when wood burning, it is extremely hard to fix mistakes. Once the wood is burned, there is no way to turn it back into its original color. This is shown with the picture on the right. I was attempting to make the flower white but accidentally left the heat for too long so it was left with some black patches. However, I tried my best to cover any mistakes by just changing the design. For example, the acorn on the bottom was originally just going to be a leaf. However, it was not matching with any of the other leaves that I made so I decided to change it into an acorn.
Overall, I really enjoyed making this project and it taught me a lot about patience and adaptability.
Presentation
After completing our projects, we presented them to the rest of the Freestyle class. It was really fun to see how creative everybody was for their Zenith and how passionate they were about their projects.