If a wire sculpture is my intention, the drawing is complete.

The drawing is transferred to a large piece of paper of plywood using projector or computer.  I use pliers to trace the drawing with the wire.  Once I’ve created all the parts of the illustration, I lay them out on a large steel surface and braze them together using a gas torch that burns Oxygen and Propane.

Sometimes, I make a model out of copper wire. It’s much smaller – usually fits on an 11 X 17 sheet of paper. The model is soldered with lead, painted and installed on a piece of cardboard.

A line drawing is made using the pen tool in Photoshop to create a path that is exported to Illustrator for editing and sizing. It’s important to avoid tracing.  Just use the assembled photos as a guide.

If the final illustration will be a wire sculpture, the drawing is made with as few continuous lines as possible.  The drawing above was made with three continuous lines.  In illustrator I might reduce that down to two lines and when I make the final wire art, I might be able to do it with one continuous piece of wire.

If the plan is to make a botanical illustration or stained glass piece, the drawing is made out of many shapes placed together like building blocks.  Each shape will hold a different color when the illustration is complete.  All the shapes together will be used to create a mask that is used to remove background.

The drawings I make are either lines or shapes. The ones that will result in wire wall murals are started as simple lines.  The ones I make with the intention of creating a Botanicals illustration or stained glass piece start with an exploration of the shapes in a subject.

Both techniques start with a series of photographs that are assembled and drawn. Before computer illustration (pre 1980’s or so) the printed photographs were cut and glued to illustration board.  Line drawing was copied with drafting pen on a series of over-lays that were themselves cut and glued to illustration board – traced again a number of times until the image was what I wanted.  Shapes were  cut out of  frisked on multiple clear over-lays and air brushed.  Drawings sometimes took months of reworking before the illustration was finalized. Today, by using a computer to do essentially the same thing, I can complete a drawing in days.

The first step in making a drawing template for a wire wall mural or making a botanical drawing is to take a number of photographs of the subject being considered.

In the case of botanical drawing, I consult a botanical text to find out what’s important to show.  Usually that is “the Flora of North Central Texas” a publication by the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (http://www.brit.org/) Fort Worth, TX. I make 10 or 20 close-up photos with the intention of picking several to assemble on the computer.

The drawing of the little girl above was made after taking well over thirty photos of my granddaughter playing in the sand. I assembled some of the drawings on my computer to begin the drawing process.

In both cases I have a pretty good idea of how the final drawing or wire wall art will look. I make photos for wire art that will allow me to show the most characteristic detail with the least line. I make photos for botanical illustrations that emphasize color and contrast and will make interesting shapes.

JPG images of wire wall murals are very small.  That’s because the wire is usually just one color and the background is solid white.  File compression software reduces the bit count to very little.

This is a good thing if you’re sending the image to a friend who uses only dial up or mobile phone. He doesn’t have to wait a long time to see what you’re sending.

There’s a disadvantage, however, if you’re entering the image into a contest, submitting it to a gallery, or adding it to a directory that insists the image be at least a certain size.  Both images above are in JPG format, 72 pixels per inch, about 8 X 11 inches large. The drawing on the right that was suggested for a wire wall mural came to 85 kilobytes, the botanical drawing on the left was 316 kilobytes.

I can make the wire wall art very large because I make it out of many smaller characters that can be hung on the wall together.

This one – called “Fun Run” – measures about 30 feet wide – depending on how far apart the characters are spaced -- and four feet high. The sculpture was developed for the Little Rock AR convention center.  It was installed at the base of an escalator to help direct visitors from the Peobody Hotel to convention center meeting rooms

When I work out a template for a wire wall sculpture, I study every line and bend I will make using Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator on the computer.  I often find I make unintentional and unconscious changes when I actually bend and weld the wire, however.  When I hang the work on a wall, I often find what some artists call: “Happy accidents” that make the final product much nicer than what was planned.  It could be the wire sculpture building process, because it requires all your attention while you work with it.  It could be the wire itself.  It could be that I’m just lazy and leave out parts to get the work finished.

I made a drawing of a girl on a swing that I was going to call: “Girl swinging.”  However when I viewed the final piece, I had to call it: “girl on swing with duck.”  Much more interesting.

I don’t think the fact that is was duck hunting season and our place is next to a popular hunting club lake had anything to do with the addition, but you never know.

Wire sculptures are installed on small loops – usually three of four per character.  Wire wall murals made for public areas like hotels, convention centers, or hospital waiting rooms may have more mounting loops to discourage vandalism. The art is mounted to the wall on wall anchors or wood screws. The loops hold the illustration about an inch away from the wall.

One of the loops is welded to the sculpture allowing the art to be balanced on a single finishing nail. The customer can hang the art this way—temporarily, to get used to it’s location – then mark the locations of all the loops and install wall anchors before permanently installing the piece.

Framed prints, photos, and oil paintings can get moldy in wet locations like shower areas, over hot tubs, and around indoor swimming pools. The mold collects behind them where the air is warm, wet, and stagnant.

Wire wall sculptures are mounted about a half inch away from the wall so air moves freely around and through the illustration. There are no spaces where mold can develop because the wire is mounted directly to the wall – not a board or canvas. The wire is powder coated with a mold resistant material.

This piece and others were purchased by an upscale resort hotel in the south of France and by five other customers because it was perfect for wet areas. One beach house owner had it powder coated with a special pigment that resisted salt spray.

We often recognize people by their facial profile without be conscious of it.  Tha'ts one of the things I explore in my drawings and wire wall art.. People exclaim: "That looks just like them," not realizing that I've mearly expressed a feature that they view unconsciously.

I do it by making a very accurate drawing from one photo or a few assembled photos. Next I remove lines until I have only the essence of the image.  In this cae that was the outline of the faces and characteristic hair.

This piece was made as a wedding gift.  They loved it. The drawing was made from two photos I found of them on Facebook.  The final wire wall mural is about 40 inches tall, made of 9 gauge steel wire and powder coated gloss black.