I have always thought of wire being the nightmare for a 3D artist, I have worked with wires before, and it was a disaster, as the more I try to control it, the more it “rebels”. I have mentally assumed wires being uncontrollable, and that was still how I thought at the beginning of the project.
Until I realized how magical our hands are, the finger and strength can easily domesticate wires and see how purposeful and fluent the line is once it follows how I control. To achieve this, I think the practice of contour line drawing blindly or haptically both helped my hands gets into the instinctive mode where it follows what muscles and brains tell.
Especially when I am using the wire to structure the drawing of my hand, I felt like drawing with a pencil, the wire has gently followed the flow.
My biggest challenge is to “draw” 3 dimensionally as I have never drawn 3D where I can walk around it and it’s something that wires can achieve. It excites me but also troubles me because not only need I to let the wire go left and right but also up and down while creates human structure. I started with the thick wire, it was much harder to control, however, it provides stabilization. It came out not as idealized as I thought it would be because I realized that I have mistakenly created it with the idea of a 2D at the beginning and then changed it to 3 D by emphasising the pointy nose and mouth and back of the head structure. That way, the 3D effect has presented less than the other two 3D structures. the second structure I started to be aware of how bumpy and how perspective human faces are, and I divided a face into 2 levels, forehead, cheek bone and the chin connect with a nose as the high level, and where eye and mouth goes as the lower level. This way has help me looking at a help so much more 3D. For the 3rd one I decide to building a bold head structure with the high and low levels, and then I add “decorations” like eye brows, eyes, lips on to complete it.
Something really surprises me was how useful to combine different gauge and types of wire change a work. An efficient way I found out is to use a softer and thiner wire to do the “glue” part of work for the thicker wires therefore can achieves more constructive aims. Besides using thin wires as “glue”, they can also depict the detailed parts like eyes, or pupils or lips.
From this study, I think I am one step close with wires, and I realised how magical the way our hands are build and what our hands are capable of making is unlimited. I am looking forward to creating 3D art.
