Low relief, or bas-relief, is when forms are slightly raised from
the background. High relief is when the forms are raised at a far enough
distance from the background that they look disconnected from the
surface. Sunken relief is the opposite of low and high relief; instead
of the forms being raised off the background, they are cut deeply into
the surface.
For my Relief project, I chose to do an altered book because I wanted to
try something different and it seemed like an interesting idea. My
piece is a sunken type of relief, since I cut into the book to create a
3D scene. First, I had to choose a book that was the size and thickness I
wanted. I drew the design I wanted to make and planned it out as a
3-dimensional picture: which parts were going to be which layer and how
thick each of those layers were going to be. I numbered each layer from
foreground to background, starting at 1 (the bird) and ending at 5 (the
sky). This was also the order in which I would cut them. Then came the
long process of cutting the pages. Basically, I would take five pages at
the top of the layer, place a cutting board under them, cut the design
out until I had cut through the five pages, then repeat until each layer
was finished. This part took me at least two weeks to finish. After I
had finished cutting the book, I painted the layers in bright colors and
painted the rest of the book black. For the front cover and third page,
I created stencils that I cut out and traced onto the book, then filled
in with silver Sharpie. I also used the silver Sharpie for the lyrics
on the first and second pages. For the back cover, I copied the logo for
the Coldplay song "Up With The Birds", which was my inspiration for
this piece. I used gold Sharpie for the bird and a blue-green acrylic
paint that I bought for the circle surrounding it.
I
am most proud of two things: that this piece turned out as amazingly as
it did, and that I actually finished this at all (at least before the
semester ended). The book turned out exactly as I pictured and hoped it
would, and there is nothing at all I would change about it.
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| Front Cover |
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| MX stands for the title of the album that this song comes from, "Mylo Xyloto." "Up With The Birds" is track number 14. Hence, MX14. |
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| Inner Pages |
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| Cut portion of book |
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| Detail |
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| Back Cover |
