Students learn to design 3D wire sculptures of shoes by researching existing shoe designs, brainstorming ideas, and creating sketches. They finalize a shoe design sketch detailing the wire structure, connections, variety of values, and front and side views. With safety precautions, students solder the wire pieces together to construct their 3D wire shoe sculpture based on their design. Examples are provided of both successful and failed past student projects to guide current students' work.

1. Line / Emphasis / Volume
Wire Sculpture
3D Design
Manami Ishimura

2. Emphasis
• giving prominence to a part of a design. Some features
are emphasized while others are subordinated.
• a visual element of length. It can be created by
setting a point in motion.
Line

3. Objective
In this project, students learn three dimensional
structures from designing a shoe out of wire.
Students need to research, brainstorm, and
design referring to existing shoes.

4. Example

5. Example

6. Example

7. Examples

8. Research
• Go to the websites:
1. https://virtualshoemuseum.com/material/cork/
2. https://www.si.edu/search/collection-
images?edan_local=&edan_q=Shoes
3. Other resources
• Find 5 favorite shoes
• Download the proposal format from the blackboard
• Attach an image of the shoe along with the title, artist,
and elements/principles of design that relate to the
design

9. Ex. Research 1:
Wind Bell
Yuzhao Huang
Elements: Line / Mass
Principle: Asymmetrical balance

10. Brainstorming
• List more than 3 styles of shoes that you can come up with.
Ex. Athletic, feminine, casual, etc…
• Give at least 4 words (can be noun / adjective) to style
Ex. Wild, flower, colorful
• Sketching at least 2 different designs for each style
• Concrete your idea answering the questions below:
1. What is the situation that shoes would be used for?
2. What is the story behind?
3. What elements / principle of design are using in the design?
• Finalized the shoe design sketch clarifying below:
1. How is the wire structure can be?
2. How will you connect all wire together?
3. Does the design have a variety of value out of wire?
4. How is the front view and side view? Draw both
• Attach an image of your brainstorming sketch and design sketche on the
proposal PowerPoint.

11. Brainstorming Example

12. Final Sketch Example

13. Documentation Rules

14. Lighting – get rid of unnecessary dark
areas or spots

15. Bad Examples
No Shadow on your images!!!!

16. BAD Example - Blur
Image must focus on your sketches!!!

17. Soldering

18. Safety
• Wear eye protection.
*Solder can “spit”.
• Run a fan!!!
*When you solder
galvanized metal few
zinc goes into the air as
fume

19. 1. Sand the surface of galvanized wire
Rust and galvanized wires are hard to
Solder. So sand the rust orgalvanized
Surface off with sand papar.

20. 2. Fix wires using a helping hand

21. 3. Apply a flux using an acid brush
Flux is acid so do not use a regular brush.
Apply flux on the jointing part

22. 4. Heat round the jointing part
DO NOT Heat the jointing part!!!!
You heat only around the jointing part.
Otherwise, the wire does not get the certain temp to
merge flux and soldering core but only the core melt.
Once the flux starts bobbling, apply soldering core;
The core melts immediately.
DO NOT WAIT until flux gets burned
(will be brown color)

23. Demo

24. Line / Emphasis

28. Failed Example
These are beautiful works, however,
There are rather 2-dimensional works.
In this project, the piece must occupy
3 dimensions.

29. Failed Example
No tree!!