The Great Wave 3D

For this project I designed a stencil based on Hokusai's "The Great Wave of Kanagawa" - a well known piece of art.

Using open source image editors such as GIMP and Inkscape, I converted the original piece into 4 colors and adjusted the image into layers 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 to 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 acrylic spacers to insert space between the sheets.

I spray painted one layer per panel and then laid all the panels and spacers from the bottom (back) up. I used a small amount of acrylic adhesive to bond the spacers and panels so that the entire frame was firm

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 some rough edges