Mummification February 7, 2012
Posted by claralieu in Materials, Sculpture.trackback
The test piece that I made yesterday dried overnight, and it was unbelievable how strong and hard the paper mache was. I even threw the piece on the floor just to see if that would damage it, and it came back totally fine! My three gallons of Elmer’s Glue arrived this morning, and yesterday I went to Home depot to get white shop towels and a sonotube. A sonotube is a very thick cardboard tube that they use to pour concrete columns. The ultimate plan is to slice up the sonotubes into strips so that they can be used as the support structure, as opposed to using chip board.
So today I was able to work with the exact materials that Tony Janello suggested, which was great. I also tried to be more efficient with the chipboard structure, using fewer pieces and not building up the form so specifically and as heavily.
Just from working on these three test pieces, it’s clear to me that there’s going to be a really big learning curve in terms of learning how to sculpt with the chip board. It’s probably going to be a long while before I even think about the logistics of a 4′ tall head,
The paper mache process is incredibly sticky, wet, and fun. With all of the strips of white paper towel, I feel like I’m mummifying someone.
These are beautiful! I once made monsters with paper mache newspaper, then I needed wrinkles so I dipped old T-shirts into Elmers creating wonderfully manipulative wrinkles. So fun!
Deb
I work exclusively with paper mache -mostly pulped paper though- but I just finished a series of masks like these with great results. I really like this technique.