It's All About the Mounting

BAS RELIEF WIRE PORTRAITS

BEGINNING 3-D ART

craft wire on bristol paper and matt board

I have to be completely honest, the kids hate this assignment, every year we've done it they let me know how much they hate it.  LOL

But I feel it's a really good experience for them.

And I think some things should be a bit more challenging, and working with wire is. 

I had them do a small preliminary piece first, this year we did tiny birds (I'll try to find the photos I took and post them).

They turned out fairly well, some were very realistic, some were whimsical.

So the kids went in with a pretty positive mind set.

I have the students bring in a photo that hopefully has some expressive qualities to it.

I make them trace the face and features with pencil, just to get the feel of it.

Then I bring out the wire and have them start on the easiest parts first.

This is where the kids start to crumble, and start to complain.

And this is where i keep pushing them forward.

I ask them to pull out some of the features so the face has a bit more bas-relief feel to it (hard to tell in the photos).

I feel like senior Jinnie Choi nailed the assignment above.

What I also really like that she added  background color when she mounted it.

And yes, they were also required to mount and sign the pieces.

8th grader Annie Lin also did a really nice job with this project.

Her subject was rocker Amy Whitehouse and I think she did a really great job on the eyes.

I also like the musical butterflies she added as embellishment.

I thought senior Jasmine Lim did a terrific job as well.

She really paid attention to all the little details which make for a very pleasing piece.

The mounting is very cool too, how the hair extends into the border area.

The kids got to chose from 3 differnt metals to work in, gold, copper and silver.

It's a fairly expensive assignment and the kids are pretty wasteful, but I still think it's so worth the experience.

(all the wasted, used wires are recycled in other projects)

Love, love, love how junior Kaili Hamada mounted her work above.

It really makes her piece stand out from the others.

And this one above is a different take on the assignment as well.  

Senior Dhruvi Chauhan chose to do a profile.  

All the others chose frontals or 3/4 views.

That also makes her work pop from the others as does the use of the decorative scissors on the white mounting paper.

Lovely!

One of my favorites was done by senior Megan Yeu.

She was one of the few kids that actually enjoyed the assignment.

Perhaps because she is also a 2-D students and is comfortable working with portraiture.

Whatever it was, her's is really outstanding and very creative in her mount too.

And this last one was so unique by junior Payal Morari, bringing in text, white pencil and tape.

Clever girl, clever piece!

Wire Faces - Student Work

This is the first time you are seeing this assignment, can't seem to find the pix from 2 school years ago when I first tried this project.  Have to tell you the Beginning 3-D kids in both school years HATED IT, complained the whole time.  but I'm going to keep teaching it because the results are so wonderful as you will see. The requirements were to bring in a pic from home to work on top of.  The kids lay their wire on top of the edges of all the facial features and conform the wire to them.  Easy breezy right???  Nope, the kids really struggled to make these happen.  My view is that sometimes you need a good struggle to help you grow as person and as an artist.

The one above with the wonderful red lips was done by senior Mylan Jefferson.  

And the expressive one below by senior Leah Huang.

The pretty piece with the roses was made by senior May Luong,.

And the one below by sophomore Reis Misaka with the great curly hair.

Sophomore Laarnie Barcelon created this next one above with the cool matt ( they also had to mount their piece when done).

Below is the work of 8th grader Jenna De La Paz.

Here's another very emotive work by senior Jessica Barnett.  I really like ow she combined both the gold and silver wire.  They also had copper to choose from.

One of my favorites was done by very creative senior Alison Lee (above), of Albert Einstein.   Love how she mounted it. 

And below we have Walt Disney (who also looks like Lauwence Welk to me), made by senior Michelle Yoshimoto.

And lastly we have the work of senior Priyanka Shah, who really did an outstanding job manipulating her wire to look exactly like her resource.