Hand-bent brass wire figure study
From Figure Drawing to Wire Sculpture
This remains one of my favorite fine art projects. The photograph shows the finished, framed piece hanging on the wall of our home—but the work itself began years earlier, as a simple classroom exercise.
The Origin: A Figure Drawing Exercise
In the fall of 2000, I enrolled in a figure drawing class at the University of Colorado Boulder. Figure drawing is, in my opinion, the single best way to develop advanced drawing skills. The artwork began as one of the exercises from that course.
The assignment was deceptively simple: create a figure drawing using a single continuous line, with a strict time limit of 30 seconds. To increase the difficulty, we were instructed to place our easels on the opposite side of our bodies from the model. In other words, the model was on one side, the drawing surface on the other (see diagram below). To make it even more challenging—and far more interesting—we were not allowed to look at the paper while drawing.
Tools and Materials Used in the Original Drawing
I was working with a soft pencil on large-format newsprint—the standard medium for traditional figure drawing exercises. At the time, I didn’t think much of the result. Like most class work, it was filed away with the other hundreds of pieces I’ve created over the decades.
Rediscovery and a New Direction
Several years later, while going through that archive, the drawing caught my attention. It had a loose, expressive quality that reminded me of Impressionist-era work. I felt I wanted to do something with it, but I wasn’t sure what.
Although I do have a few of my old pencil drawings framed and hanging up, this drawing was far too ragged and road-worn for that, and after a little thought, I came up with the idea of recreating (tracing, if you will) my drawing with wire, and mounting that on a suitable background, giving it a sort of 3D look.
Translating a Drawing into Wire
The final piece is constructed from 1/32-inch hand-bent brass wire. The wire itself came from a visit I made in 2003 to see my longtime friend, mentor, and artistic hero, Frank Andrews.
Frank was a highly successful artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I had previously worked for him at his art business, The Sculpture Studio in Kansas City (see my résumé), and we’ve stayed in contact ever since. The wire was leftover material from that visit.
To recreate the drawing, I carefully bent two three-foot lengths of brass wire to match the original line exactly. Two pieces were necessary because the wire stock I had was limited to 36-inch lengths.
At each end of the wire, I bent a short section perpendicular to the plane of the drawing. These ends were punched through the backing material to anchor the wire in place.
Mounting and Presentation
The backing consists of parchment-like art paper, spray-mounted to a rigid piece of cardboard. This provided both visual softness and enough structural support to hold the wire securely while allowing the line to appear as though it’s floating on the surface.
The Result
What began as a 30-second blind contour exercise evolved—years later—into a dimensional reinterpretation of the original gesture. The piece preserves the immediacy and imperfection of the drawing, while transforming it into a physical object that exists somewhere between drawing and sculpture.