For my Individual Project, I decided to do a layered paper art scene. The idea was that I wanted to use colorful paper layers to create a whimsical 2D scene that had some 3D depth to it. I was heavily inspired to do this based on two artists I did research blog posts on: Ale Rambar and Daria Aksenova who are both artists that utilize paper and paper layering to create their 3D work. From Rambar, I used some of his topographic method for making some elements of my scene pop-out more while with Aksenova, I drew more from the idea of a story scene being created with the layered art.

The base idea for this project was that I was going to use a combination of colorful card stock and regular paper and have them be layered on top together with tape and glue. So, I made sure to buy colorful card stock, colorful printer paper, an X-acto knife, a cutting mat, a roll of adhesive foam tape, and some double-sided tape.

I started off by making some sketches of the scene I wanted to create before settling on the middle sketch.

After deciding on the sketch, I made a digital render of the layered scene, so that I have a better idea on how many layers I’m going to use, what each layer should look like, and in what order they need to be in to get the desired scene result.

Afterwards, it came down to choosing the colored paper and card stock that best matched the layers I digitally rendered and sketching on them so I can cut them out accordingly. Once all the layers were cut out, I was able to stick them together using both the double-sided tape and the adhesive foam tape. The double-sided tape was for layers that I wanted to be close together with little-to-depth between them, and the adhesive foam tape was for layers that I wanted more depth and space in-between. Since I couldn’t find a shadowbox frame that would fit this final piece, I ended up making a paper frame on the front so it looks like a frame border and acts like a window into the scene.

How does my project address the theme of “Drawing Into Space”? It uses layered paper that adds depth to the piece and has overlapping shapes going on to really sell that. Plus, the use of negative and positive space with the paper layers is what is being used to “draw” each element into the overall scene, and when all combined, show a collated scene with depth to it because of the layering.

If I had more time to work on this project and wanted to improve on it, I would’ve loved to add all the other details with the flowers, leaves, and branches that are in my digital rendering of the scene, and I wish I would have gotten a thicker adhesive foam tape so that the layers had more depth to them. I also would’ve loved to have put this in an actual shadowbox frame that was the perfect size for it.