The Great Wave
3D Stencil on Acrylic Sheets
For this project I designed a stencil based on Hokusai's "The Great Wave of Kanagawa" - a rather well known piece of art.
Using open source image editors such as GIMP and Inkscape, I converted the original piece into 4 colors only and adjusted the image so that it would be suitable for cutting out.
There was a slight mechanical aspect involved dealing with making a 3D "canvas". The idea that led me to paint on acrylic panels was that I could layer them such that it would give the painting more depth. In order to do this I simply cut 4 sheets of acrylic to the appropriate size and cut holes in the corners so that rods could go through them. All of this was done with the laser cutter at my school. Steel rods were used to align the sheets together, along with acylic spacers to insert space between the sheets.
I painted one layer per panel and then layed all the panels and spacers from the bottom (back) up. I used a small amount of acrylic glue to bond the spacers and panels so that the entire frame was firm. The rods were slotted through the panels and the spacers and ensured that everything was lined up
All in all, I am quite happy with the end result. The colors are bright and pop out really well in lit environments. Furthermore, I think my desired effect of depth was achieved and that the stencil turned out great! If I were to do a similar project again, I would take the time to mill down the acrylic sheet edges, as the laser cutter resulted in a lot of slop.
- Date: August 2014