way out​

I'd been wanted to create a piece that had a three-dimensional aspect to it for while.  Then, one day at Jerry's Artarama, I noticed they sold thin sticks of soft wood pre-cut to certain widths and had a light bulb moment.  Mazes have always fascinated me, so I came up with a design to combine symmetry and mazes with the three-dimensional idea I was considering.  The first photo is my "blueprint"; the red and green lines represent different heights of wood (1/4" and 1/8", respectively).  In the second photo, you can see what the sticks look like, and the cool device I used to cut them -- The Chopper!   The third photo shows some small mock-ups I made to test the concept..

As usual, I drew a grid onto the board I would be using.  Additionally, once I started gluing the pieces down, I also found it helpful to reproduce the diagram on board as well.  I used wood glue because of its strong adhesion.  The process of gluing down all the pieces took over 40 hours in total.  The last photo shows the finished product, before painting.  I really liked the way it looked at this stage, and considered not painting it, but ultimately decided to follow through with the original vision.

The first photo shows one of the ways I initially considered painting the piece; I built a mini paint roller the same width as the wood pieces using a paper clip, felt, glue and a small bit of tubing.  In my tests, it covered pretty well, but didn't give a very smooth surface when it dried, so I abandoned it in favor of some 1/4" paint brushes and a steady hand.  The second photo shows some color testing.  I wanted the background to be black, so I figured I would spray paint the whole piece first (3rd photo), then paint over it.  I was able to prime the surfaces with a white paint marker, which you can see in the result of in the photos that follow.  After priming, I applied a couple of coats of latex paint, whose colors I had mixed beforehand.  This took a really long time.

Once I had painted the top, I finished off the piece by extending the colors down the sides, as I usually do.  The blue appears a little washed out here from the fluorescent light above my desk.  The third photo below shows the 3D-ness of the piece in detail.  I'm very happy with how this turned out.