Si Lin Chen

Canning Vale College

Year 9

Clay and acrylic paint

20 x 13 x 26 cm

Hot air balloons are steam-powered aircraft which suited our topic of Steampunk. I was inspired when I saw a picture of a hot air balloon and a boat. The bottom part of the boat looked like a bird, so I did a combination of a bird and hot air balloon. A bird can also be closely related to aircraft so combining natural and man-made elements made an interesting design. The materials I used were clay and paint, and a number of tools to shape the sculpture. Some of these include kidney tools, scribes, sponges and modelling tools. I used a variety of hand building techniques to create the sculpture and finalised the look with dry brushing. The body of the sculpture was made of two pinch pots joined together and the process was repeated for the balloon. I rolled different slabs and coils to shape the boat and the balloon. Once fired, a black paint was sprayed over top to give a better effect when dry brushing. For dry brushing I used an old bristle brush and lightly brushed the sculpture to give the ancient look.