Assemblage Sculpture

For this project, I had to create a sculpture using different materials to represent the color and textures of my subject. I chose to create a butterfly for my sculpture because I love simple butterflies, they remind me of my childhood. I didn't really understand how I was going to create an entire sculpture using newspaper and tape but in the end I did it and I think it turned out great. One of my main goals with this sculpture was making the structure really strong so it would be easy to add on all of the materials. I had never made a sculpture using this assemblage method but it was a really creative process.

I started out using only tape and newspaper to make the structure and form of my butterfly. I quickly realized that in order to get the wing shape right while keeping it sturdy, I had to tape wire onto my newspaper. The wire allowed me to bend the pieces without them falling off. After I made the outline of my butterfly I taped news paper all throughout it to fill it in. After this, I wrapped more tape around the butterfly so it would be easier to add my materials on top of it. I added wire to the butterfly head to represent antennas. Once this was completed, I was done with my armature. The next step was to find and cut out pages from magazines. I focused on the color blue for the color of my wings. After collecting all different shades and tones of blue, I began to hot glue the magazine clippings onto my armature. This defiantly took the longest amount of time to do. I also added green newspaper clippings to the body of the butterfly. After a few burns on my hands, I finally finished hot glueing my entire butterfly. My last and final step was painting modge-podge on my sculpture to add shine and make it look more complete.

This entire project was a very long, but creative process. I used materials that I hadn't used all year. It took a lot of time to add each piece to this project. If I could go back to the beginning, when I was thinking of ideas, I think I am content with my decision to make a butterfly. My first Idea was to add black lines onto the butterfly over all of the blue. This plan changed because when I began laying out the black, It just didn't look right to me. Instead of doing this, I covered the entire sculpture instead of just one side. This way, the butterfly can also hang.