Paper Sculpture

The main idea that guided this artwork is the artwork found on old maps. Often times on old maps, filling up parts of the empty sea, there are depictions of different monsters swimming around and/or attacking ships. I was inspired by this to create a paper sculpture of a sea serpent bursting out of the water from theas old maps. In terms of the design of the serpent, I was inspired by dragons, particularly the hydra from greek mythology before it's one head was cut off and split in two.  I liked working on a dragon-like creature because they are something iv been interested in for a long time, the first project I did in 2D design was of a dragon. Something else that guided me was starting off the dragon with geometric shapes as scales, this translated into the rest of the pice were I used a lot of sharp edges except for on its underside. To give it structural integrity I propped up the head and used a popsicle stick on the underside. 

The nature of this project, like the last, was to create something primarily out of paper. First I cut out and folded paper squares to build the back "scales" of this piece which when put together, held together everything like a sort of spine. I cut, folded, and glued a piece of paper to be rounded in the front and then cut triangles out of it to create the top part of the head, I then hot glued on the lower jaw and horns. The marine body is made up of rolled tubes of paper glued to the bottom of the "spine". To keep the piece upright like I wanted it I glued a popsicle stick to the underbelly for support and tightly rolled up a think piece of paper to act as a column to support the head. Finally, I drew on nostrils and eyes. 

I used a lot of geometric shapes is this project because I thought it would be important to creat a general "skeleton" as the serpent instead of going insanely detailed since this was my second time working with paper to sculpt. I crumpled up the base on which I glued the structure and added protruding spikes where the serpent was connected to convey the illusion of water. I tried to prop up the head of the serpent as high as possible with the collom and the popsicle sticks because I wanted to convey the fact that it was bursting out of the water, as some large sea creatures do. I kept the pice white because it shows the of medium and places emphasis on the geometric shapes.