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FORMAL QUALITIES OF A LETTERFORM Raeann Langas & Leah Walters
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Leah’s Initial Letterforms
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Raeann’s Initial Letterforms
Then we played with the cardboard forms to determine how we wanted to build our sculpture. We were inspired by how the letters were askew in the original design and also wanted to exaggerate the negative space and give the forms depth.
We started here, with a design by Tyler Poirier. The straight, clean lines and corners have a modern feel we are both drawn to.
In class on Day 1, Raeann constructed 3-D mockups of the letterform from cardboard. We ultimately used the construction as a guide for our final product.
After playing with two cardboard forms, we decided we would need more to really give our sculpture the dimension and sense of movement we envisioned. Our final mockette uses 6 “F� forms and much like our design inspiration, it develops negative space by inverting half the letterforms.
Initially we wanted to use desert foam and flowers to build our sculpture. With a little experimentation we abandoned our plan since the flowers took up too much of the negative space we liked so much.
We decided on foam core and hot glue instead. They were constructed from pieces the same way our initial mockettes were.
To cover the plain white forms, we used shades of blue and blue-green tissue paper and modge-podge. Our goal was to create a sense of movement with color variation. By adding layers of white to some of the forms and not others, we were able to create gradation that helps the eye travel.
The individually covered forms were then attached with hot glue to create our final sculpture. The changes in dimension and color work together and make for playful and dynamic 3-D form.