Made by Jon Keller
To make my mighty ant I had to make an ant and I had to make a leaf. I looked at several images of ants to get a good idea of how they actually look close up. I sketched out a simplified ant and used my sketch for a reference . The armature was made with wire . The paper mache was mad with used printer paper. Initially I had painted him red , but ultimately I decided to go with a black ant .
The leaf was made with brown paper bag paper mache . I rolled out a thin sheet of paper mache onto wax paper. When it was dry enough to handle ( but not yet fully dry ) I cut out the leaf shape and gave it the surface texture to suggest a leaf.
I took a walk in the park to find a nice chunk of wood for the base.
Both the ant and the leaf were painted with acrylic paint and varnished with polyurethane .
before assembling everything onto the base.
Brilliant idea! Brilliant subject matter. Brilliant job.
Thanks for sharing all your work, your tips, your techniques.
You are so multimedia talented and its a real pleasure to get to see the things you do!
Looks just like an ant with a leaf. Perfect! I really like your idea of rolling out the pm clay and letting it dry some to cut out the leaf. I’ll have to try that. It looks like the edges are very clean. I bet mine won’t be but I haven’t tried it so shouldn’t say. I like recycling natural items too. It IS satisfying.
Very cool, and thanks for describing your process. I just found a cool piece of wood on a bike ride, and my friends mocked me for carrying it home, but it has “sculpture base” written all over it.
Thank you for your comments…..
Yep, there is an abundant supply of great sculpture materials ( for free ) just outside your door. My Eagle is also on a piece of wood I found in the park . When I do a sculpting project I find it interesting that is costs so little for the materials…..so much can be harvested from daily life. Someow I find that to be very satisfying.