How to Make Paper Sculpture Animal Masks (Part One)

[Music] hi i'm julia from reynolda house museum of american art here with another video to inspire you to be creative and make art at home today we are going to have the first in a series of three videos that show some paper sculpture techniques for how to use paper to make forms to make them look like animal masks and the video today is going to make a bird mask like this and i was inspired by a goldfinch as you can see with the yellow and the black i used paper and i added these feathers but you don't have to add the feathers you could just do this as a simple strictly paper sculpture reynolda house has a collection of porcelain sculptures by the british ceramic artist and sculptor dorothy doughty the collection has porcelain figures of some american birds and we can find inspiration from these for our bird face masks for example i will make a goldfinch today because i liked its bright yellow and black feathers you might want to look up pictures of birds to inspire you or invent your own bird using the materials that you have on hand i'll show you what you need to do this project and how to make it for this project i recommend printing out the mask base template and the bird beak template from the printable instructions and templates listed below if you print them onto cardstock the templates will be easier to reuse and you can use the mask-based template as both a pattern and as a sturdy background on which to put your mask next you'll need construction paper or other decorative paper if you didn't print the mask base out on cardstock you'll need some other sort of heavy paper from which to cut it out you might want pictures of birds to inspire you like this perula warbler scarlet tanninger indigo bunting yellow warbler or goldfinch just as examples you will need a pair of scissors a pencil and a glue stick you might want feathers and glue or a stapler to attach them to be able to wear your mask you'll either need a hole punch and string a popsicle stick and tape or ribbon and a stapler this video and the others in the series will show how to use patterns to create three different animal masks you might want to change them or create an entirely different animal to help you i want to show you four techniques two of which you might use for this bird mask first when you see a solid line in the pattern that means it is a place where you will make a cut after cutting around the shape i cut along the solid line here in this circle now you can change the shape this is a circle but it might be an ear or other shape from a flat shape into a 3d form see how i overlap the two sides and can make a taller or a shorter cone think about what this shape could make second these patterns have two different kinds of dotted lines to show you where to fold an even dotted line means a valley fold a fold that's like a valley between two mountains a dot dash line means a mountain fold a fold where the sides slope down like a mountain if we look at these on the side you can see how the valley fold is like a v and the mountain fold is like half of an m the next technique helps you make folds especially on curved lines when you score a fold on construction paper you can use a tool like a bone folder or scoring tool to trace over the pattern where the dotted line is if you don't have a scoring tool you can use the closed edge of a pair of scissors and run it over the dotted line it makes an indent to help you fold later but you don't want to cut the paper think about what kinds of shapes you can make by scoring along a curved line finally the last technique is curl wrap paper around a pencil to curl it you can keep the curl tight or loosen it out you can also pull it sideways to make a ringlet or coil how can you use this technique in review cut along solid lines and see how cutting a single line in a shape can help you make it 3d mountain and valley folds help make shapes stand up too scoring helps you fold and curling a strip of paper around a pencil can make coils or circular shapes to make a bird mask i started with a mask based template traced onto heavy paper then to make this goldfinch i decided it needs a short beak cut out the beak template you want then trace around it onto the paper that you will use to make the beat i lightly copied over the fold lines to my new paper but you can also put the template on top and score over it to make an impression on your construction paper for where to fold score your paper along the fold lines fold see how the mountain fold down the middle of the beak makes it stand up like a bird's beak and the valley folds on the sides of the beak will give a place to glue it behind the mask base glue the goldfinch needs a yellow face so i'll trace the mask base template onto yellow paper and cut it out to cut the eye holes lightly bend the paper without folding at the middle of the eye make a slight cut to create a slit then open it out use the slit to let you get your scissors in to cut around the oval you might want to cut out shapes for your bird feathers or you can tear the paper to make a jagged edge i want the face to have texture so i'll rip yellow paper in addition to the black paper for feathers [Music] to glue place a piece of scrap paper underneath your papers when putting glue on them this lets you get glue all the way to the edge of your paper without getting glue on your work surface glue all papers in place do [Music] for this mask we'll attach a stick so you can hold the mask in front of your face turn it over tape or glue the stick behind the mask at the edge [Music] if you want to add feathers you can glue or staple them in place [Music] share your creations on instagram facebook or twitter using the hashtag reynoldathome find more videos helpful downloads and other resources on the learn page at reynolda.org find more pop-up studio videos at youtube.com reynolda