Since I’m getting more interested in 3D I decided to experiment with some mediums I hadn’t tried before. With these sculptures I was looking to do more exploration of perspective and create sculptures that form images from only one particular perspective, or perhaps sculptures that have different images hidden from different perspectives.
3D Pen Scuplture
I thought about making a sculpture that shows two different faces from two different perspectives. One might represent what we see on the surface of people and the other face is the side of themselves that they hide.
I used a 3D pen that I had in my possession which uses melted plastic as ink so I can effectively draw the faces in plastic and then bind them together.
While I’m impressed with what I managed to do with the 3D pen, it was a lot of failure that led up to this point. I’d never used the pen at length before attempting this and I was definitely not prepared for the level of challenge. I came across so many problems:
- The amount of plastic that came out of the pen wasn’t always consistent, so finding a pace to work at was nearly impossible
- The plastic wouldn’t always follow the movement of my hand. It was very squirmy, which made it difficult to follow the guidelines I had drawn up
- The remnant threads of plastic that hung to the tip of the pen after it had been turned off tended to stick together and mess up the image
- The plastic wasn’t strong enough to stand on its own. I had to continuously apply layers to keep it upright, and even then the plastic would bend under its own weight and warp
- The pen used up my supply of plastic very quickly. I barely had enough to complete this small piece
- Switching colours can be a long and wasteful process. When I ejected a colour there would still be a lot of plastic still in the pen that couldn’t be removed. So, when I tried to put in a new colour, I had to do a lot of drawing with the pen just to get rid of hat was left of the old colour.
The only real solution to these problems that I could think of would be to work on a larger scale to allow room for error, but considering how quickly the pen ate up my supply of plastic, I would have to purchase a lot of refills. Overall, I’m glad I gave the pen a go, but I probably won’t be using it again for this project. It was too finicky for me to be able to make any kind of detailed piece.
Wire Scultpure
Another similar but different idea I had for a sculpture was to make several sculptures in wire that combine to form a single image when viewed from one particular angle. The main idea behind it was to force interaction from an audience. I wanted to explore the idea of people intentionally becoming a voyeur and working to view a person.
I decided to use one of the rough sketches I made while at the train station and develop it into a character. It seemed fitting considering the experience I had when making this sketch.
With a bit of work, I eventually got him looking like this…
Once I had my character fleshed out, I tried to simplify it so I could sculpt it.
Finally, I separated my simplified design into five separate pieces to make five wire sculptures.
Immediately when I started trying to make the sculptures I knew that I had made a mistake. As it turns out, I was using the wrong kind of wire. It was malleable but too thick to work with. I couldn’t work in the finer details of my design. In hindsight, I had probably already doomed myself to failure by making my design too complicated. I had never made a wire sculpture before, so I was already out of my depth.
My next mistake was failing to account for how distance from the viewer would affect the sizing of the sculptures. In the end, nothing really fitted together and the image I had hoped for turned out to look more like a pretty scribble.
I had fun making this sculpture, and with the right materials I might try something like this again someday. However, I don’t think this medium is quite right for this project. I enjoy adding detail to my illustrations and I feel that unless I work big on a sculpture like this, I can’t add as much detail as I would like.
In the end, I think paper is the thing I prefer working with the most. I might attempt this sculpture again with paper at a later date.
alicia hempsted 