Have you ever made a sculpture of any kind of insect using recycled materials? I don’t think I have done it before during my childhood or in high school. This is my first time making it.

In this assignment, I had to draw some insect sketches that I could make it as a sculpture out of recycled materials. I had two ideas, one is a dragonfly and the other is a beetle. I drew different views to show both of these insects.

As my chosen insect, I chose to make the dragonfly. I drew an anatomy and four different views: front, side, top and 3/4 view to show all angles of the dragonfly. After finalizing my sketches, I included the measurements, materials that I will use and colour.

 

List of recycled materials I used:

  • Pieces of old newspaper and papers with PVA glue and water (paper mache)
  • Melted hot glue (using hot glue gun)
  • Thin wires
  • Used pipe cleaners
  • Colouring materials: spray paint, poster paints
  • Adhesives:masking tape

Making process of the sculpture

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I used small pieces of newspapers and used papers and used a mixture of PVA glue and water to make the paper mache for the body structure.

I added in more layers to make the dragonfly’s head.

Moving on to the wings! This is my preparation to make the dragonfly’s wings. I printed out an outline of the wings and place a tracing paper onto the outline. Then, I traced the outline using a hot glue gun onto the outline. Then, I repeated the process onto the other side of the tracing paper to make the wings have more volume.

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Front wings

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Back wings

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However, the wings are not stable enough to stay upright so I attach a wire to hold the wings in place and used hot glue gun to glue the wire to the wings.

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I coloured the wings using a red spray paint. The inner part is only coloured while the outer part is not. This is similar to the bali red dragonfly.

I coloured the main colour of the body using a red spray paint.

Then I painted the details with shades of red orange and black using poster paint.

After painting the body and wings, I attach them together using hot glue gun.

After finishing the body and wings, I worked on the dragonfly legs. I used 3 pairs of red pipe cleaners to make the structure of the legs. I painted black at some parts to match the overall colour of the dragonfly.

I attached the legs to the dragonfly using hot glue gun.

Final outcome

Throughout this assignment, I learned how to make my sculpture more stable and durable from the materials I used. I learned to analyse the structure in detail in order to get the correct structure of the dragonfly.

 

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