Ellie Birkhead
Ellie works with all kinds of materials from wood to clay. She often uses waste materials, such as plastic washed up on the beach or recycled glass bottles. She likes to get her hands dirty and try out all kinds of making techniques to help her come up with her designs.
Recent project reports
Now for the fun part - designing and building the beach / motorway scene! I have used a mixture of natural materials that I collected from the beach near where I live including sand, tiny sticks, rocks and little stones and combined these with paint and some glue to build up texture on the base board.
I painted the sea by mixing sand with acrylic paint and tried mixing different tones to create depth and waves. This part of making the model has been my favourite so far as I can start to see it all coming to life.
Alongside working on the robotic part of the model I have started to making the baby turtles using air dried clay and painting on their markings. They are looking very cute!
The first prototype of the conveyor belt is up and running! It's powered by a motor which turns the conveyors belts in opposing directions so that the turtles can travel in both directions up and down the beach. It also runs the windmill to show that element of the design in action.
