Paper Mache animals inspired by Oaxacan Wood Carvings

Oaxacan Wood Carvings or Alebrijes

Oaxacan Wood Carvings come from Mexico.

Mayan ruin in Playa del Carmen Ancient cultures of Mexico include the Aztecs, Incas and Mayans.

What does Mexico look like today?

Bull Fighting is practiced in Mexico just as it is in Spain.

The city is congested but there are many remote areas of Mexico

Carvers of the Oaxacan wood figures are usually families.The Skills are taught to children who teach their children and so on.

This is considered a folk art. Folk art means it was created by someone that had no formal training.

These pieces of art have FORM.. They are a sculpture. A sculpture is something you can walk all the way around. It is three dimensional.

You will first need to decide on an animal. Some people look at the branch they are about to carve and see what it most resembles and then make that animal.

You can do the same by looking at the recyclables you brought in and deciding what it could be.

The form can be made with a bottle or plastic container as the base for the body and then add on legs with paper towel tubes. The head can be created out of a paper ball. This where you need to get creative with materials. Remember to make the features like eyes and mouth a lot bigger than normal so that they will stand out under the many layers of paper mache.

Here are some examples students came up with :

This little fish started as a coke bottle.

Patterns are important!!!!!!

MOUSE RHINO

Hippo

Elephant PIG

First create the form. Use tape to smooth the edges and keep things together.This was a milk jug, egg carton feet and twisted newspaper wrapped with tape.

This started as a Hawaiian punch bottle. It has a paper ball wrapped in tape for the head with a cardboard mouth. Make sure your animal is balanced!!!!!

Completely cover your animal with at least two or three layers of paper mache.

Try to add a final layer of a solid color paper like white. This helps the paint show up better. The final step is to paint the animal after the paper mache has had time to dry. Feel free to draw patterns on the animal and paint around the patterns or you can paint one color allowing time to dry then paint patterns over it.

Check out the patterns on these carvings.

The End