Carousel-Part 2- Pictures

Giraffe drawn to scale.

Inside silhouette.

After much pondering about how to make my carousel, I decided to make a carousel of vintage menagerie animals, because seeing one in a museum is what really inspired me to do the piece.  I'm getting a good start on my carousel project.  My first task is always to do some research.  I find that reading about whatever I am working on gives me more ideas for things to work into the project.  I have learned a few things about carousels that I never new before.  For example, the side of the carousel animal that faces towards the outside of the carousel is called the Romance side.  The Romance side is generally more richly carved than the other side which is referred to as the inside or non-romance side.  Sometimes carousel animals are ornately carved on both sides.  It makes sense from a time saving perspective to not have to do as much carving though.

Poster board mock up to test the size.

Supports are toothpicks and poster board, and tape.

My carousel animals are not going to be carved.  They are going to be made of paper mache.  The book's instructions for carving aren't going to be that helpful, but the information on proportion is going to be really useful.  However, the proportions in the book are sized differently than what I need, so I am going to have to make some adjustments.  I am making carousel animals that are only half the size of their minimum measurements, so everything is going to have to be significantly reduced.  I'm working from two books, and both books say to scale up the patterns by using the grid method.  Neither of them says to slap the book on a copier and put in a percentage.  (I'm guessing that they had not thought that it would be a feasible wood carving project to make it any smaller than one-eighth scale.)  So, in deference to their instructions, I am using their recommended method of making a grid drawing to reduce the size of the pattern to one-sixteenth scale.  It is a good deal of work, but I'm trying to keep in mind that by working grid by grid I am improving my drawing skills as well as working on my carousel project.

I need to make sure that my animals are going to be the right size for the carousel, so I did a cardboard mark up of one of the animals.  Its easy to think that this was quickly done, but it was not.  To do a grid drawing to get the right scale and make the cardboard mock up took a day and a half.  The test animal was a giraffe.  It was the tallest of the animals, so it will give me a sense of the maximum height of the animals as well as the length and width.  The animal silhouettes are poster board, held together by pieces of poster board, toothpicks to strengthen the legs, and tape. 

As usual, I learned from my mistakes.  My first mistake was that I made the drawing of the animal without including the saddle.  It does not take anything away from the giraffe, but from a standpoint of building the carousel animal, it makes sense to have the back part of the saddle that extends above the back of the animal as part of the design when I make the paper mache sculpture.  I have to go back in and add that to my pattern.  At least I discovered that before I made more animals.

My second mistake was probably one that most people would not notice.  I put the Romance side on the inside and the non-romance side on the outside.  All in all, it is not a big deal, but someone serious about carousels would probably notice it since I'm trying to reproduce vintage creatures.  When I make something, I try to keep in mind that people can be really passionate about details.  From this mistake, I learned to make sure which side is facing the outside. 

I tried to take the animal apart, but I accidentally tore the leg off of it while removing the tape.  That is okay. It was just a mock up to check for size. Unfortunately, I did all the math in my head when it came to reducing the width of the animal.  Now I wish I'd written it down.  There are a lot of measurements to take into consideration.  I only used a few, to get a general shape, but it was a lot of work to figure it out since I had to convert from eighths to sixteenths and thirty-seconds to get the measurements I needed.

 I learned a lot about constructing the animal armature by making the mock up.  Specifically, that poster board by itself was not going to be enough support for the paper mache.  I will have to make a much sturdier frame to support the weight.  I'll blog more about that in future posts.