3D Letters Sculpture Art - LA

We fabricated and painted some 3D letters in wood as a prototype for a large scale public art sculpture in the future. We are known for our postcard style murals throughout the country. However, one of our goals is to create a truly interactive public art sculpture as giant three-dimensional letters. Our fine art fabrication partner is an amazing Los Angeles based shop that we have worked with for many years. If you have a similar idea on a larger scale, we would love to help make your vision a reality.

We wanted to start small since we didn’t have a van to transport this sculpture around ourselves. In addition, we started with just two letters “LA” since we are based in Los Angeles. Both of these letters have sharp edges and avoid curves, and we wanted to keep it simple to start. It is totally possible to create curved letters like a “S” but it just takes more labor and the purpose of this project was to create a small scale sample.

Once we designed the dimensional aspects of the lettering, our fabricator helped bring it to life. After that, we primed the wood and got to work on a design. The painting process was similar to our postcard murals except we didn’t have to paint the actual letters. However, we did have to paint the sides and back of the sculpture a solid color. In this case, we used tones of purple as a tribute to the Lakers! We also raised the outline of the lettering slightly so that it had some dimension and would cast interesting and subtle shadows. Next, we painted a DTLA sunset skyline with some palm tree silhouettes in the foreground. The designs were created using all spray paint and masking techniques. Finally, we gave the entire sculpture a few coats of clear coat to seal and protect it!

In the end, we were happy with how the LA 3D letter sculpture came out. We are very excited at the possibilities of creating true interactive public art using our custom lettering. The next step is to scale this up with much bigger letters builds. People are already creative with the ways that they take photos in front of our 2D murals, so we can’t wait to see how they interact with three-dimensional versions of our large letter postcards!

Year: 2020