The last leaf

     Walking or hiking is a good time to think about narratives.
     "The last leaf" could work as an environmental piece, telling a tale of deforestation (look, see the clean cutting of the branch? See???), with a single, dying, splotchy looking leaf just about ready to fall off.
     However, the piece above isn't really a piece yet, and it isn't going to be about the last leaf. And I'm no longer twelve, and I don't think we're evil human beings out to destroy nature out of sheer spite.
     The branch and leaf are just working samples for techniques, and reminders of what I should and shouldn't do to get more effective results while soldering and forming. Composing a narrative will, however, determine the direction of the work. I'm using fairly simple techniques, nothing that requires very fancy machinery, and trying to avoid the use of chemicals (worst thing I've been using is a mixture of salt and vinegar for pickling). The forms, such as the leaf, relies heavily on basic fold forming forces (with the help of solder) to work and look like it could be a real moldy dead leaf (at a quick glance). It will be a technique that will be repeated numerous more times to represent numerous other organic forms (lichen, fungi). I could, for example, work that into the narrative, which would give a different overview of the work. But, for now, the white moldy looking splotch just means that I did a bad soldering job.