sbartist : painting in the dark: Papier-mâché Animals on Parade... a #Cre8time Collaboration with #MixedMedia Friends

Friday, September 4, 2015

Papier-mâché Animals on Parade... a #Cre8time Collaboration with #MixedMedia Friends

Hello friends. I know I've been a bit quiet... I'm not able to burn the midnght oil creating all night, every night like I used to... though I am still creating - with reckless abandon!

Grab ahold of your seats!!! It's that time again - time for another Cre8time Collaboration hosted by the amazing Tina Walker. She came up with another fabulous challenge for a bunch of us mixed media junkies... an altered papier-mâché animal collaboration. You know I was all - in!!!

I am so excited to share my whimsical creature that is a twisted and taped bundle of recycled newspaper, packing papers, paper towel tubes, WIRE HANGERS {yikes}, topped in a hoarded cherished jar of purple chalkboard paint.

I started out by cutting up and bending two recycled wire hangers {from dry cleaning} and began building up my creature with rolled up newspaper wrapped in masking tape. Feet done!

This body is stuffed with loads of newspaper, tissue, recycled paper towel tubes and I decided to add a couple craft matchboxes. I taped these together to create a trio of mini drawers.

I reinforced and secured edges of drawers with a good beading of hot glue. This also helps keep the moisture from the wet gluey paper from warping and dissolving my boxes.

I cut up another hanger and bent into ear shapes. I hot glued this to a stiff recycled paper tube {I think it was one from saran wrap} and taped on balls of crumpled paper to create the head shape.

Then its on to the laborious task of papering my creature. I used a mixture of 1/2 PVA glue to 1/2 water. I mixed it in a big pyrex cooking dish and began soaking and adding on torn sections of recycled tissue paper, newspaper and packing paper. This took several hours since this critter is so large. I set it aside to dry overnight.

It's really coming along and OMG... it's got a personality!!!

I added some brads mounted in discs of paperclay for eyes, and molded a bit of paperclay to the snout to create indentions for the nostrils. When papering, I must have been sniffing the glue - I only thought to give my new friend a BIG happy smile - LOL!

When clay additions were dry, I painted the entire figure with a purple chalkboard paint that I picked up on clearance ages ago. I painted on layers in a drybrush fashion so that I didn't affect the papier-mâché. Due to monsoon storm - this isn't drying as I expected. I'm going to have to wait a bit longer for this to be dry so I can take some chalk to it and doodle up my new studio mascot... a super cute donkey!! I will share as soon as I can - this paint is still glossy and a bit tacky - which seems ODD for a chalkboard paint.

I need make a point to give credit to another artist who provided me the inspiration to make this critter. An amazing mixed media artist I follow on FB - Karen Kradel Fincannon, who makes wonderful sculpted critters.

I have had this screen shot in my phone for quite a while and I'm pretty pleased how my donkey came out... though her lil' guy is so STINKIN' cute!!! Thanks Karen for sharing your wonderful art online to inspire us all.