Sculpture

Art 1

by Rita Heithoff

January 10, 2008

The Art 1 students are starting the second semester off with a sculpture project. Their assignment is to complete a paper mache "head and shoulders" sculpture that shows strong emotion. They began their project by looking at some examples of faces showing emotions such as anger, surprise, fear and laughter. After they chose an emotion, they began their sculpture.

Their next step was to construct an armature using newspaper and masking tape. This structure needs to be in proportion and self-supporting. The armature is the "skeleton" of the sculpture. The armature is constructed from two balls of paper, a pyramid, tube and hamburger shaped pads for the shoulders all taped together. Next the students smoothed out their armature by taping sheets of newspaper over the armature. This forms the "muscle" of the sculpture and makes a smoother surface to paper mache on. The next step was forming the features of the face. The students used tissues, paper towels and tape to form the eyes, eyebrows, nose, cheeks and mouth. The last step in the sculpture project is to apply the "skin" or paper mache.

Newspaper is torn into strips and dipped into a white glue and water mixture in a plastic, ice-cream bucket (thank you to everyone who saves those for us!). The students run the strips between their fingers to remove excess glue before applying the strip to their sculpture. Several layers are applied to cover the surface. When the paper mache dries, it forms a hard surface and is ready for decorating. The students know they have enough layers when the surface can no longer be dented in when pressure is applied. These projects will be transported to several art shows and must be strong enough to survive all of the handling.

Students may decorate their sculpture using a variety of materials that include but are not limited to paint, tissue paper, colored sand, glitter, beads, wire, screen, tin foil, feathers, seeds, bark, leaves and anything else they can think of.

Click on the slide show to view the students progress. Additions will be added as the project progresses.

Paper Mache Sculpture Slide Show