Kristin's Art: Relief Art

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.