Completed Work

Zittle the Seahorse

Zittle,

A seahorse so brittle. 

I am 

A curious seahorse

Of turquoise and the deep ocean blue

Skittering past

Gapping jaws

Of a killer whale.

From doing this project, I learned a lot about my creativity and I also learned a lot about the art of paper mâché and how fun it is to create and work with. As I look back on my project, I really struggled with creating the body of my creature because it seemed to never be the right shape or form that I wanted it to be. Everything after that was mostly easy because once you had the structure of your body down and you paper mâchéd your creature, you got to start decorating which was really exciting. Some of the successes of my creature would be making a body that was sturdy enough to withhold the weight of everything as well as the head of my creature because it is very detailed and stands out as well. In the end, I feel really good about the final product of my creature because I worked really hard on it and in most parts, it came out the way I wanted it too!

Creature in Progress

Creating my creature was for sure a work in progress because of all the steps it took to get the creature right where I wanted it to be. First off, I started with a simple sketch of my creature in my notebook with details that gave me ideas for the final product. The first step in creating your creature is that you start crumbling up paper to form the shape and head of the body. Next, I wrapped tin foil around my creature to add more details to its head, fin, and tail. After that, I paper mâchéd the creature, putting about three to four layers on it to make it become more sturdy. Finally, I put white paint over my sturdy creature and started to decorate it with paint, stickers, tissue paper, and drawings.

Here is the final sketch of my creature, which helped me with creating the real version of it. 

After I made the head and body of my creature, I wrapped it with tin foil.

Next, I wrapped tape around the tin foil to make the creature more sturdy.

This was my final version of my creature, before I started to paper mâché. 

This is after I have paper mached my creature and I have added some cellulose clay to make some of the appearances stick out more.

After paper mâchéing my creature, I added white paint so I could start to decorate it.

To create the final product of my creature, I used tissue paper, paint, marbles for the eyes, and along the way I used paint pens for some of my details.