Introduction

The Multi-Layered Art Project was our opportunity to apply skills we had learned in Adobe Illustrator to create a physical printed product, either with wood or paper layers. I chose to create a paper lightbox for my project and ended up with this piece:

Inspirations and Reflection

I was feeling nostalgic, so my initial inspiration for the layer art project came from my grandfather’s garden with its variety of flowers and tropical plants all clustered together. I knew from the start that I wanted to incorporate lots of overgrown plants and vine motifs throughout my artwork, and I ended up settling for this scene of a person riding a swan pedal boat through a river.

One part of creating a light box I hadn’t originally worried too much about was the fact that all cut-out parts had to be connected to the border, since each layer was not directly attached to the one behind it. This presented a bit of a creative challenge, and I used Illustrator to plan out my layers in a way that hid sections I didn’t want to be visible. For example, in order to center the swan boat, I supported it with strips on either side and then hid those behind some plants in the frontmost layer.

I’m most proud of my ability to adapt my original sketch to a relatively similar final product and something I am genuinely happy about! It was a very new experience for me to design a physical piece almost completely from Adobe Illustrator, so finally assembling all the layers together and connecting the LED lights was very fun.