I was really excited for this project, our prompt was to think about what would happen in the future, if we had to expand into space. This made me think about how NASA had been trying to grow plants in space. I knew i was going to do something with plants.
I also thought of Avatar, the 2009 sci-fi film. I was inspired by the glowing plants, maybe we will have glowing plants soon because of all the toxins and chemicals we have created.
This made me decide to create my own plant.
These are two images from the movie and two mood boards that I created that inspired my plant.
I found images of tropical plants and a natural geographic article I had seen, of glowing plants.
I knew that I wanted get a glass dome to emulate a scientific lab experiment. I also knew that I wanted to use some left over pvc vinyl, and I wanted my plant to glow.
I then drew out two variations of the plant i wanted to create.
I decided on the first one.
I used clear pvc vinyl to create the petals and the leaves.
For the leaves I first painted them white. Then I added watered down pink paint on the opposite side of the white paint. This kind of looked like the spots on the orchids. Then I poked holes into the leaves and added wire to be able to place them into the foam.
After I had cut out these leaves, I cut out green foam (what florist use for displays) to fit the glass dome. I then placed the leaves around in a circle. After that I started to place some moss all around the sides and under the leaves I had made to cover up the foam and give the plant more greenery. I used three different types of mosses, a red, and two different kinds of green moss. This helped give it lots of texture.
I also created the stem out of wire, I used jewelry pilers to twist two pieces and then added branches by added smaller pieces and leaving the ends un twisted so that i could twist them with the main stem.
Once I had all of this done, I drew out a template for how I wanted the flower shape to be. Once I was happy with them I cut out the pieces in vinyl. After making the leaves I had realized that it was easier to get the effect I wanted by only using one layer instead of ironing two pieces together. This time i didn’t paint the back of the vinyl and only painted the front. I also had some left over nylon string. I used that to sew the pieces together, this also allowed me to leave some string loose to be able to use it as anthers and filaments. I added the ends with hot glue.
I decided to have a very simple design for the flowers since the leaves were more bold. I paints stripes of fluorescent blue on the top three and then painted the bottom two in a lighter blue ( I mixed some white into the blue hoping it would still glow under uv light. and it did.)Then I added some watered down yellow fluorescent to the leaves and the anthers.
I also decided to create a flower bud and cut out three vinyl pieces and then sewed the sides together. I added three hot glue dots on all three sides. Once it was dry I painted the tips with yellow and pink. Then I added blue paint in the middle to make sure it would glow. I then attached all of the flowers to the wire stem.
It was really fun to see how everyone reacted to seeing my plant glow for the first time. I bought a pack of mini uv lights for the class to be able to shine on the plant when i was presenting.
I also made a poster with an image of my plant. I was not as happy with this part of my project. I wasn’t able to spend as much time on this as i would’ve liked. I made up the name from the scientific plants names of some of the plants that inspired this project.
If I had done this again I would’ve worked more on get the glow on the plants better, and adding the color on the pedals. I also would’ve liked to add the other plant that I sketched out. Originally I had planned to make a botanical drawing.
I traced my drawing on illustrator.
I then I went back in added color and made somethings transparent.
Then I brought everything in to Photoshop. I found a picture of a texture that was similar to the one that i had made with the paint.
I had to change the color with a color adjustment.
Once I had the right color I used clipping masks so that the leaves would be covered in this texture.
I choose a black background to try to make the colors pop out more, but it didn’t really help i couldn’t figure out how to get the right glow.
for the flowers I drew in the blue lines and used the brush tool to get the texture on the rest of the flower.
And that how everything came together.