GIRL ALMIGHTY

This is my relief portrait. I had to create a portrait of a person out of a material that had some importance to that person. I chose one of my friends, who happens to really love music. I decided that i was going to make the composition out of CDs. I took many pictures and found one I liked. I converted the photo to black and white and made it so it had two values. The light value was the white space and the dark value was the black space. Since the cases were black and the CDs were a brighter color, I used the CDs as the negative space in the photo.

Next I needed to start the project. I started by collecting old CDs, most of which did not work, and then i was able to get started. I needed something to build off of so that the portrait had some depth. I decided to make it out of CD cases from the CDs that I used. I hot glued them together to make a base. So that i did not ruin my background, and because it was plastic, i chose to sketch out the basic outline in a whiteboard marker. It then became possible for me to erase it and redo it as many times as I needed.I took my CDs and broke them up. I originally was doing this by hand, but it was dangerous so i ended up breaking them up with pliers. Once I had a variety of shapes and sizes for pieces, I started putting them on the background. The sharp CDs made a very cool looking texture for my sculpture. I started with the larger pieces making the background and then later used the small pieces for the more detailed parts, such as the jacket, and facial features. I applied all these pieces using hot glue.

Once my portrait was mostly finished, I still had some work to do. I had to go over any little spaces with more CDs and then I had to pull of the many many glue strings left by the glue gun on the portrait. i also had to use a paint brush and get rid of all the whiteboard marker stains left on the background to make a finished product. I was very happy with the way the portrait turned out. I liked how shimmery it was and the way the CDs showed a reflection because they were made of glass and mirror-like material. Overall I think this was successful and turned out how I wanted it to.