Wednesday, December 11, 2013

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.



Front Cover




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.




Inner Pages



Cut portion of book



Detail




Back Cover









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