Ok, @Cotty 's last post made me realise I still haven’t shown the other thing I do using SU.
tl;dr
when I’m not OK, I find that making stuff with my hands helps a lot. few years ago I lost 3 people in a short time, and I started making animal heads in paper. later moved to geometrical art, because I like geometry. Considering the last 3 years and what has been going on, I’ve never really stopped. I’ve sold a few, given other to friends and family, and I have kept some around the flat. but it’s not a business (yet at least). it’s art therapy of sorts.
So it starts in sketch, in my sketchbook, doodles, ideas, stuff I’ve seen, and It stays here for some time. Then, slowly, it becomes like an itch on my brain, and I know I need to start working on it.
from there I make a 3d model in SU. At times, I used various methods to unfold, an extension (unfolder), a software (pepakura), and it’s good for complex models. But at some point, unfolding by hand is good too. I don’t care about efficiency, it’s a hobby, a therapeutical one, spending an hour unfolding stuff is part of the game. (in a related matted, I enjoy detouring stuff in photoshop. turn off the brain, and just… clean stuff)
I try simple geometry, “almost flat but not completely” stuff, Hitomezashi diagrams, and recently I’ve finally tried curves… Thing with paper is, it’s supple. you can bend it from a flat surface to a complex curve.
a quick detour to illustrator to join lines and give some colours, and then off to the cameo silhouette. At some point I had a laser cutter on hand, and I did a few by hand, but I’m done
And voilà.
Here are a few examples, the most recent ones, I’ll add the links to the instagram posts with extra photos and older stuff.
inspired by Olaffur Eliasson’s work - without knowing. I used a bucket of dices to set the randomness of it
a Hitomezashi diptych, google “hitomezashi numberphile” to learn how to, it’s really simple and quite enjoyable. plus you can colour it afterward.
White studies , trying curved stuff and delicate patterns, white on white wasn’t very readable, so I did these using a bit of linoprint ink ink
I like hexagons , and the way this one creates a slight curve.
Previous had people say “it looks like the JWST”. so I added one row, did some mistakes, and ended up with this one. I’ll remake a cleaner one, with gold paper
Curves in SU aren’t real curves, and at times, it’s a pain in the seat, but in this case, it allows me to decompose the curve and place tabs. I’ll retry with smaller tabs to make the curve smoother, my sister say it looks like small bread.
Want to see more / older stuff ?
On instagram, you’ll find older stuff from my laser era, A giant 110x70cm pattern I did during lockdown, the simpler prototype, monochromatic penrose tiles and the very first one, Losanges. still one of my favourite