Large Johnny Cake Sculpture - Part 2

Building up the armature.

Today is another quick blog post.  I am sorry that I have had to interrupt my Lamb Soft Sculpture project but this week is really busy for me.  I have not had time to work on that project.  I have been blogging about one of my projects that was made but never put on the blog.  I was not blogging about it at the time because I was making this project as a birthday gift and I did not want it seen so it would be a surprise.  After that, I was busy working and blogging about other projects and never seemed to get around to putting it up on the blog.  In the long run it probably just as well.  For this week when I am really in a time crunch I have something I can put up on the blog.

Completed Johnny Cake

Last blog post I showed the drawing of the Johnny Cake face sketched on poster board.  Once I had a working drawing, it was time to build up the face with an armature.  For this project the armature was made of aluminum foil and masking tape.  There is not a lot of technique to it. Aluminum foil is rolled, folded, pushed, and mashed until it is approximately the shape you need.  It is taped onto the base with masking tape.

Once the armature reaches the desired shape I covered the armature with strips of newspaper dipped in flour paste.  The flour paste is no mystery; it is just all purpose flour mixed with tap water until a proper consistency is reached and all the lumps of flour have disappeared.  What is a proper consistency?  That is hard to describe.  It is not so thick that it is hard to cover the strips with an even coat of paste.  It is not so thin that it is watery.  The paste just coats the strips of newsprint without dripping off.  It is one of those things that you know it when you see it.

Unfortunately I did not take a picture of the project when it was just covered with newsprint.  I can only describe what I did.  I laid strips of flour paste covered newsprint over the front until the entire project was covered.  When it was dry I flipped it over and laid strips until the back was covered.  Once dry I repeated the steps.  There are four layers on the front of the project and three layers on the back.  Extra layers of paper mache' were added to help build up areas of the face.  The final layer being on the front and wrapping around to the back so that no ends of the newsprint showed. Then it was sanded until the project was (relatively) smooth.  After that it was painted and sealed with a high gloss sealer.  I added a hanger to the back of the project so that it could be hung on a wall.

It is one of those projects that sounds so simple.  It took a fair amount of time.  Each layer of paper mache' had to dry completely before another layers was added.  Maybe no one cares about Johnny Cake faces anymore, but a long time ago the story of the Johnny Cake was very popular.

Check back on Thursday for another "behind the scenes" post.