Gargoyle Sculpture

The next project I will be sharing with you is my gargoyle sculpture. I also made this in my Science in Art class in high school, and it was one of my favorites. As always, the first step was to choose an image. Since this project was 3D, we had to choose multiple images that covered all angles of what we were going to sculpt. I based my sculpture on one of the gargoyles on the Notre Dame in Paris.

After I found my image, the next step was to make the base of the whole gargoyle out of paper and tape. This was particularly difficult because it was hard to get the paper to do what I wanted it to do. Also, the tape wasn’t very sticky, and we had a very limited supply, so the arms on my gargoyle would fall off a lot. I made the corner of the building out of cardboard.  Here is a picture of my gargoyle so far!

The next step was to cover the paper sculpture in plaster. By layering strips of plaster,  I was able to mold the gargoyle to look more like the picture. I could add things like back muscles and more dimension to the ears. After a couple of days, the supply of plaster ran out, so we had to switch to newspaper and diluted glue. Here is a picture of my progress partway through.

SURPRISE! This is an interactive sculpture! Everyone had to run a tube through their sculpture because when they were all finished, our teacher was going to make a chemical reaction that would shoot through the tube and come out somewhere in our sculptures. I personally chose to have my gargoyle throw up by running the tube up his back and out of his mouth. Here is a picture of where I had to saw my sculpture in half in order to fit the tube.

After I ran my tube through my sculpture, I had to patch the hole with more newspaper and diluted glue. I also had to finish covering the rest of my gargoyle. After I was done with that, the next step was to paint it. I am not personally proud of my paint job, but I was short for time and the more important part to me was watching my creation throw up! I don’t have a video of my gargoyle throwing up, but I do have a picture of him after the reaction. The yellow foam on his mouth is the leftover chemical reaction. I also can’t tell you what my teacher did to make the chemical reaction occur because she never told us. Happy creating!