This is the big fish I made for the exhibition last month. The gallery owner had asked me to make it and I thought it was a great idea. I love making things out of paper mache and any other materials I can get my hands on. And I love experimenting. And making something this size was a challenge.

I had made a life size bulldog a few years ago, but this is a totally different animal (haha). This is a link to the bulldog – unfortunately unfinished in this post…

Anyway, back to the fish. I’ll go through the process, which was all a bit hit and miss with a lot of learning in between. It took a while… not just the working but the drying…

I began with wire I’d gotten off old paper lanterns someone was throwing away. Recycling being the main aim.

I made the spine and ribs using the very hard wire, then wrapped it all in cardboard and masking tape. Lots and lots of masking tape.

I used cardboard to make the head and tail and moved on to paper mache using strips of newspaper, which is becoming a pretty scarce resource these days.

I had thought paper pulp would be the way to go so that the entire fish was recycled material, but the pulp was taking way too long to dry. And wouldn’t stick well either. Probably my own fault, I got the mix wrong… However, by the time I decided that it wasn’t going to work I’d already done the head and ribs on one side.

So I swapped to plaster. Using plaster bandages I coated the entire fish and that dried nice and fast and really hard, which was the most important part.

However the fish was getting really heavy and the spine was too flexible. Not good… I had to reinforce it somehow so that it would hold together well and not bend or crack.

I did what I always do: looked around me to see what I had that might work. I found an old piece of timber which was curved on one side. Perfect. I attached that to the fish going from the head all the way to the tail. I attached it using masking tape (the paper mache artists best friend!) and then plaster strips.

Of course I had to ‘blend’ the stick into the head and tail which I did using cardboard to create a curved look. And more tape and more plaster strips. It wasn’t totally realistic, but it did the trick.

In the end I wanted to give it a smooth finish (texture isn’t a good thing when something can collect dust) so I opted to finish the fish using air dry clay. I use air dry clay a lot to make small sculptures, and I knew i could make it work.

I love the way the fish turned out.

Would I do some things differently if I made one again? Yes, probably. I’d start with a stick for the spine and much harder material for the ribs… cut down bits of bamboo maybe, or dowel or whatever I can find. And attached using a drill and holes and glue… But not wire.

And yes, I will be making another. Soonish. It just takes time and I have so many other things I want to do, have to do, should do.

But I really enjoyed making it. Part of the work was done on my kitchen table when the weather was bad. Then when it got warmer I worked outdoors. The plaster work was all done outdoors. That stuff is MESSY.

Sorry about the pics that are vertical instead of landscape. Turns out WordPress won’t let me spin. I have to go back to the originals for that and I just want to get this posted. So there!

z