Assignment 3: Insect Sculpture

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

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.

Front wings

Back wings

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.

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.