I know it’s not Autumn yet and I’m not really looking forward to the cold weather that comes with the season but I wanted to talk about a sculpture I made last fall. This was my first 3D project. We were told to use only foam board, acrylic paint and hot glue. The teacher also had us draw out some sketches of what our piece might look like. The design that I decided to go with included five vertical panels that were four inches wide. Every other panel is raised to give it dimension. I had a harder time figuring out which parts of the design going across the panels were going to be raised. I didn’t want them all to be at the same level as each other so I came up with a color system. This is hard to explain and you might be confused so hopefully I can show you.

I used small squares of foam board and attached them to the backs of the pieces  to make them stand out at different levels.

• Blue- four pieces of foam board
• Purple- three pieces of foam board
• Pink- two pieces of foam board
• Yellow- one piece of foam board
• Red- no piece of foam board and that piece isn’t used at all

I used pastel chalk to mark the pieces before cutting them out because there was a lot of editing. Once I was happy with the result I painted a second foam board black so I could attach the pieces to it. The backs and sides of the cut out pieces were also painted black. To have a clean canvas to paint on I painted the tops of the pieces all white. It took about a day to completely dry before I could start painting it again. I painted with mostly red and blue on alternating panels with very little yellow throughout the piece. This is because I thought that if I used more color there might be too much to look at and the design would be lost.

The acrylic paint that I used wasn’t very good because I didn’t have time to go to the store. The paint was cheap and kept coming off every time I tried to apply another coat. Not to mention that it was extremely transparent without several layers of paint. The reason I named it “Autumn’s Eve” is because during the class critique someone said it reminded them of autumn leaves and the night sky. I really liked that idea plus I made it in September when the leaves were starting to change. Overall, I really enjoyed making this piece and I plan on making another one but with different colors.