Paper Sculpture: A Deep-Dive Into my Process

I tend not to do a lot of 3D artwork. I’ve always felt that as an artist, you’re either a 2D person or a 3D person, and I’m the former. But the best (and worst) part of high school art class is being forced to make art you don't want to make. That’s why, for tenth grade art class, I made this paper sculpture:

This assignment was the first time I’ve ever done anything like this. In fact, I’ve never done any type of sculpture before. The gist of the assignment was to create a 1’x1’ sculpture made entirely out of white paper. It needed to be fully white, no tape showing, AND have room to insert a light. My art teacher also said it had to be abstract, but that’s not what ended up happening with mine. A lot of people in the class didn’t follow the abstract guideline either. I think it’s a lot easier to make something like this when you have a clear idea in your head of what it is supposed to look like.

I browsed Pinterest for some ideas (always a good first step when you don't know where to start for an art project) and found a few images of wave sculptures that I wanted to try and recreate.

First, I made some preliminary sketches in my sketchbook. My final product ended up being nothing like these drawings, mainly because of skill, time, and resource limitations. However, a lot of elements from the original idea were definitely prominent in the final product.

Another aspect of the assignment was to create mini models of the sculpture to guide the process. I made one that wasn’t structurally sound at all, which my teacher pointed out. I sketched it out and explored some different ways to support it. This is where I started to run into some problems. How would I make sure the structure could stand up on its own, while still having room to insert a light for the final display?

I shared these struggles with my teacher, who suggested that I try using white glue and tissue paper to make the surface stiff. The next model incorporated that idea. You can definitely see how different the two of them are!

From there, I moved on to my final piece. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of the framework, which sucks because it was the hardest part! I do have some sketches that show how it looked. It was made of Bristol board so it would be a little stronger. Masking tape held it together.

Next was the front part. I was inspired by the irregular oval shapes you see in wave pictures and used that to make the 2 overlapping sections you see at the front. This was done with an X-Acto knife, which gave me really bad hand cramps!!

In the end, I added texture to the sides using crumpled up pieces of tissue paper. This was because I had focused way too much on the front and the other 3 sides were looking too plain. I didn’t end up adding the crests to the wave because I hadn’t planned how to do it and I didn’t want to mess up. (This is why you should plan the whole piece before you put it together!)

The very last steps were just cleanup. I added on many, many more layers of tissue paper to make it opaque. The sponge brush I was using actually started to disintegrate from being soaked with glue, leaving little black specks under the paper. I used some white acrylic to cover those up and added more paper in some areas to cover the making tape.

Here’s the final product:

I think this was 100% my favourite assignment of the year. It pushed me to think outside of the box and actually introduced me to a super interesting new medium I had never even heard of before! In the future, I’m definitely going to make another paper sculpture. What should I sculpt next? Leave your suggestions in the comments!

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