Steinberg

I've become fascinated by the Romanian and American cartoonist and illustrator Saul Steinberg, best known for his work for The New Yorker in the 50s. I thought I'd have a go at re-imagining Steinberg's self-referential sketch as a scalpel-cut 'drawing' taken into 3-D with thin black card cut using a scalpel (the original is on the left, a vector graphics impression is on the right - this was the template for the cutting).

Clearly this is a 2D representation but I thought it would be interesting to take it into 3D by imagining how the curve would look if he waved his arm behind him as the pen moved. The result is held in the 20mm gap between two pieces of glass. It looks 2D until you get closer when you see the distance between the lines changing. The main figure is in the foreground and the loop curves back to the background before returning to join the foot. I've tried to show this in a short YouTube clip shown below. Clearly, topological constraints prevent this from being cut from one piece, but the joins are inconspicuous.

March 2018