What is a ‘filament painting’?

I consider filament painting a new art medium, utilising 3D printing to create textured, three dimensional, raised art prints. It layers molten plastic over and over, blending colours and shades to create a ‘painting’ much like you would blend watercolours or acrylic paint on canvas. The difference is that 3D printing allows you to manipulate the surface mesh of a print to create beautiful textures (think wood, stone, marble, or even optical illusions) to enhance your 2D art.

Each filament painting is built on individual layers of 0.04mm to 0.08mm layer heights (that’s thinner than a strand of hair!) and this allows me to blend different filament colours to create the depth or the illusion of depth as needed. This does mean that some pieces of art will not be able to be replicated 100% colour wise, but I will be able to come really close.

What is HueForge? You use the term a lot!

HueForge is the program that allows me to create a 3D mesh from a 2D print. It uses colour theory to identify regions of the art print, and I can then manipulate that to lower or raise different regions of the print and get it ready for 3D printing. It’s an artistic tool much like Lightroom is for photographers, and Illustrator is for vector artists.

What is your background and experience?

I fell into 3D printing in 2020, at the height of Covid and a lot of hours spent at home. I started with an Aquila X2, where I had to build, calibrate, maintain and troubleshoot the printer myself. Hours of Klipper coding, Gcodes and bed levelling later, I graduated to using a Bambu printer and the world of multicolour printing opened up for me.

I am a HueForge expert and specialist first and foremost, and a 3D artist second. I’ve worked with Hachette Book Group twice, producing a total of 275 filament paintings for them for two James Patterson books, Eruption and The First Gentleman. I worked with their Lead Designer to produce 3D textured book covers that are included in special collectors edition boxes.

I’ve also worked with indie authors to replicate their book covers, and I’ve been able to reproduce maps, character art as well as other custom prints for bookish folks - and am so very happy to do this for anyone who is interested!

Sarah A. Parker has officially licensed two of my When the Moon Hatched items.

All the products you see in the store are my designs, sculpted by me and printed by me. As such I provide a quality guarantee - so that you have the reassurance that everything that you receive from me will be of the best quality, whether it be 3D models, or filament paintings.

Why don’t you ship to more countries?

Unfortunately, the international shipping costs out of Australia are incredibly high, even if these products are light and barely 1kg individually. Shipping to countries in the EU is also a bit difficult at the moment for a small business due to the new regulations that have been introduced. 

However, if you truly do want to purchase my items and live in a country I currently do not ship to, please send me an email to esther@cyanidesugar3dprints.com and I can see if I can work something out!