Paper Mache Animal Sculptures

How the Raven Armature was Made

Today someone asked me how the raven armature was built, because that part of the project was left out of the previous videos. As you may recall, a few weeks ago I uploaded several videos showing how I added the new home-made air-dry clay to my raven sculpture, and then how I added the iron [...]

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Adding Home-Made Air-Dry Clay to the Indian Rhino

I’ve been working about an hour a day for almost a week now to get the Indian rhino covered with the air-dry clay. Now all that’s left is to finish the other side of the head and give her some toes. Then I decide how I’ll finish her. I know you’ll think I’m nuts, but [...]

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Indian Rhino, Plaster Cloth over Wet Clay Experiment

I took a bit of time off from my book-writing job to begin an adult Indian Rhino. Not a life-sized one, but still pretty big. To make it go faster, I created the basic shapes with wet clay over a cobbled-together armature, and then covered the clay with plaster cloth. The final layer will come [...]

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Adding Sculpt Nouveau Iron Coating to the Raven Sculpture

The raven got its iron coat yesterday, and now it really does look like it was made out of cast iron. I think it turned out rather nice. Let me know what you think. If you’re interested in Jessie’s art class that I mentioned in the video and you’d like to see if there’s any [...]

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Raven Sculpture Made with New Air-Dry Clay Recipe

A few days ago I posted a video and recipe with my new air-dry clay recipe. This video shows you how the new clay looks on an actual sculpture. It was made in my normal way, using a cardboard pattern inside and crumpled paper and masking tape to fill out the form. However, I used [...]

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Paper Mache Bunny Ballerina is Bronzed

Bronzed Bunny Ballerina – kind of trips over your tongue, doesn’t it? This final step was the easiest one – just paint on the bronze coating, spritz with the patina stuff, let it dry, and spray clear coat over it. The bunny got done just as my house project did – just a few more [...]

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Ballerina Bunny Gets Paper Mache

We’re coming down to the finish, finally! I spent at least 5 hours adding paper mache clay and the shop towel mache to the upper portion of the bunny, and now she’s just waiting for her final bronze coat. I may try tinting the bronze in a few places, like the casting of the original [...]

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Ballerina Bunny Now Has Eyes

Well, these eyes sure took a lot longer than I expected. It’s a little like what happened with my “little” remodeling job – just change this one little thing, and then you need to change something else, and that means that you have to fiddle with this other thing… Whew! Three hours later, I have [...]

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Ballerina Bunny Gets a Tutu

I took a break this week from my remodeling project, and got a tutu on the ballerina bunny. It’s sort of embarrassing to have so many people know how long it’s taking me to finish this silly rabbit. Next time, she’ll get some eyeballs, and the rest of her upper torso will be finished and [...]

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Ballerina Bunny Gets a Head… Finally!

She’s still far from done, but the paper mache ballerina bunny is further along than it was in the last post. Right after I made that video, I started pulling the old paneling off the walls of my “new” 100 year old house. Then I pulled down all the broken plaster, creating a gigantic, nasty [...]

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Ballerina Bunny – Part 1

This is the first video in a series. This little ballerina bunny is based on a mixed media sculpture by Degas, but only very loosely. I thought about using a Bugs Bunny-type body, but then I just sort of started adding paper to the wire armature, and this is how she ended up. Still no [...]

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Paper Mache Dragon, Revisited

This dragon is the very first project that I created for this blog, back in November of 2008! I can’t believe it’s been that long. Even after all that time, this dragon is still one of the most popular projects on the blog. For months now I’ve wanted to go back over some of the [...]

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Paper Mache Bunny – 3 Experiments in One

This week I’ve been doing more experiments, while also playing around with modeling clay portraits. The portraits were just for me, because I’m trying to learn how to do it. You can see a few (and also see what our fellow sculptors have been up to this week) on our Daily Sculptors page. All [...]

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How to Make a Paper Mache Cat – Final Lesson

Well, it took a bit longer than usual, but my paper mache cat is done. I made a video showing how I painted my cat, (shown below). If your paper mache cat is a portrait of a different feline, or if you added less texture, you’ll want to use different colors and probably smaller [...]

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Paper Mache Book now Available in Kindle

This is just a quick announcement: My book, Make Animal Sculptures with Paper Mache Clay, now has a Kindle version. I think it looks best on the free Kindle for PC ap because the photos are nice and big, and they’re in color. Now that I’m finished with that little project, I can go back [...]

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