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When you can’t find a photo to use as a model for your paper mache sculpture…
You know I like to use photos when I make the internal silhouette-type patterns in my animal sculptures. But sometimes you want to sculpt something that isn’t realistic, so you can’t find a photo for your pattern.
That’s when you have an excuse to play around with some clay. You don’t need a detailed clay sculpture – you just need to get the basic proportions right. And yes, you could use a drawing instead, but I think using clay is more fun. And it does help to see in advance how the finished sculpture will look.
When I made my bunny with clay, I didn’t do much work to get the rounded shapes right – and I didn’t sculpt the hidden side at all. I just wanted a piece that I would show me the outline and proportions. I’ll do the ‘real’ sculpting when I add the crumpled foil over the cardboard pattern.
Taking a photo of the clay model:
The photo of your model needs to be taken from the side, so the shape of the edges won’t be distorted.
Making a pattern from the photo in a drawing program:
I used WED clay for my fast bunny sculpture, but you can use any clay you have on hand. I put the photo into the Paint Tool Sai program that I happen to have, but you don’t need to do this step on a computer. I’m really just going to trace around the outside of the shapes, and the program makes that easy. I pulled the photo of the bunny into the program, as shown above, and then made three new linework layers for my drawings.
On the first layer, I drew around the outside of the body, head and tail. I guessed where the tummy is, because I can’t see it from this angle. I ignored the ear, because I’ll make the ear pattern another way.
On the second layer I traced around the back leg.
Then I drew around the front leg. When all the layers are showing, the drawing looked like this:
Because the two legs were on separate layers, I could use the program to spread them out, and create my final pattern:
Making a pattern for the ears:
It would be nice if you could use a photo to make a pattern of anything you want, but sometimes that doesn’t work. In this case, I couldn’t use the photo for the ear pattern, because they curl up at the bottom. A photo would show the ears gradually getting thinner at the bottom, but that isn’t really the way they’re built.
So I use the clay ear for the pattern. I just took it off the rabbit, uncurled it, and traced around it with a pencil. It isn’t made the same way as the body and legs, so I’ll have to fiddle with it when it’s time to actually use the pattern for my paper mache bunny to make sure it’s the right size.
Of course, this just gets things started. My bunny needs to be large enough to pull a cart full of pumpkins for my Halloween display. I haven’t given my goblins their bodies yet, so I don’t know how big to make the cart – and that means I don’t really know how big to make the bunny, either. But I do know he’s going to be really big.
You can make patterns bigger with the poster setting on your printer, like I show in this video. But I think I’ll use the grid system this time, like all the animals in my book, Make Animal Sculptures with Paper Mache Clay. I found a great video on YouTube that shows how to make a drawing as big as you want, and you can watch it here.
Some easy projects that use a pattern:
An easy folk-art bunny – it’s really fun to make, and it’s a really nice gift project, too./
William the Blue Hippo – this is a replica of a cute little Egyptian hippo. There are three videos in this series, so it’s a good project to start with if you’ve never used a pattern inside a paper mache sculpture before.
If you’ve used a clay model for a pattern before, or if you have another way to do it that you like better, be sure to let us know. 🙂