Video transcript
The Arts Unit @home Art Bites – Trash totems – 2. Build it

Welcome back, everyone, to Art Bites. My name is Kate. I'm a high school art teacher. And hopefully you were with me for episode one and know what we're all about- building a trash totem together over these five episodes.

Episode one, we really did get down to the nitty gritty of what it was you were going to need. We looked at a bit of history. And now we're getting onto the fun stuff, we're going to actually build it. So I'm really looking forward to this the second of the Art Bites episodes with you.

OK, you've got some cardboard, you've got some equipment. What are you going to need for this first section? Pencil, ruler, as I said doesn't need to be metal, Stanley knife, or box cutter as they're often called, we'll go through some safety of that in a minute. A glue gun if you managed to buy one, or some tape if you didn't and obviously your cardboard.

What I want you to do now that you've collected all your cardboard is just go and have a little bit of a quick look through it. As you can see on this piece here, I've got some tape that I just want to pull off and the reason being that it's going to make it hard, particularly with the glue gun, but even with the tape to glue my bits and pieces together. So you can pause now if you want to and take a moment to just go and check through your boxes, flatten them out and make sure that there's no tape on them.

OK, you've done all your prep work. You've got your cardboard laid out. Now I mentioned in episode 1 that a cutting mat wasn't really a necessity. If you've got one, awesome. If you don't, what I do want you to do is either work on an old table, or you can put down some extra layers of cardboard that you'll use to cut back into. We really don't want your loved ones finding out later on that you've put a big gouge in the table.

I'm going to use a cutting matt, just to make my life a little bit easier. And I'm also going to just use some blank cardboard that I happen to have around, just so it's easier for you guys to see. Don't feel like that you have to have blank cardboard to do yours.

So, sizing, let's start with that. There really isn't any set size. I did mine squares of 23 centimetres by 23 centimetres, but you can do yours any size you want.

Doing it squares probably going to make your life a little bit easier. But it can be 10 by 10 centimetres, it can be 50 by 50 centimetres if you've got that much cardboard. The only thing you're limited by is the amount of cardboard you've got, and an understanding that the smaller you go the less detail you're going to be able to go. So that's why I've gone by 23 by 23.

I've got a nice big bit of cardboard here. But if you're collecting boxes from your bin, you might only have a little bits of cardboard, and that's OK. I'm going to show you what it looks like if we've got a big bit of cardboard, and then I'm going to show you a way to work around that if you don't have big bits of cardboard.

So, not rocket science, we're going to grab our pencil and our pen and we're going to measure three times for every measurement we want to make. And the reason for that is that, if you're like me and sometimes make mistakes, this will make sure that your lines are always straight. So I want to come across now and measure my 23 centimetres, because that's what I'm going to go with. So when I come across 23 centimetres, I'm going to pull my ruler down a little bit and mark 23 centimetres and then my final one, 23 centimetres. Pretty easy.

Now, why did I do those three marks? Well, if one of them is wrong, I'm going to be able to tell really easily and align it to my two correct ones. If I've only got two marks, I might end up with a line like that and trust me, I've done that many a time before.

So I'm just going to put a line down there. I'm not cutting anything at the moment. I'm going to come across, and I'm going to do that three more times. Ok, so I've got all of my lines measured this way. I just want you to notice, I've got a bit of extra cardboard here, but I'm not going to cut that off because I'm going to use that to help me join this box together later on.

Now I'm going to turn my cardboard this way and I'm going to repeat the process. Just notice, I've got a bit of an uneven edge here, which is going to be a problem for me in terms of measuring, so I'll flip my cardboard around. It's a little bit rough, but I'm not too worried about that for the finished product.

So again, I'm doing a 23 by 23 centimetre box, so I'm going to go 23. Now this time I'm lucky and I've got a long ruler, so I'm going to do some measurements along here where I know I'm going to get three marks in the length of my ruler. If you've got a smaller rule, like a 30 centimetre ruler, you might put three marks inside each one of your boxes. So I'm going to do that and draw a line along here, and I'll join you back here in a moment.

OK, we're back. We've got all the measurements done. What do we need to do now? Well, obviously, we need to cut our box down.

A little bit a safety precaution with your Stanley knife or your box cutter. There's different ones around, but they generally have a locking device on them if they're this disposable type. So to lock it, you just need to pull the little latch down here like that.

Don't walk around with it extended out. You are not a ninja, not yet, anyway. Let me know when that happens for you. It's dangerous. You guys know that. It only needs to be out one little section, and then you can lock it.

If you've got one of the other types of metal box cutters, again, just make sure that you're being safe with it, that you don't have it extend it out when you're walking around. We don't want to have our hand in the way of our cutting blade. Common sense, I know you guys will be rolling your eyes at me right now, because you know that. But a reminder always, never goes astray, does it?

I'm going to make sure I don't cut into the table here, because they might never let me come back if I do. And I'm going to cut down my horizon line here. Now, you don't have to do it in one go. You can take a couple of cuts to get through that and you can take your time in cutting the whole length.

Look, you could do this with a pair of scissors, but I find that halfway through the cardboard starts getting in your way and you just don't get as nice a cut. One thing I will say, though, is that I notice when students are using Stanley knives, they want to use them for everything. Stanley knives have their purpose. Scissors have their purpose. If it's not feeling comfortable doing it with a Stanley knife, go grab a pair of scissors and try it with that.

So that's taken me a couple of cuts. Now look, I could potentially, I've already got my marks there, make that into another base product for my totem pole. If it was just a little bit of off-cut, don't chuck it away. I was working on mine yesterday, and the amount of gold I had in my off-cuts to help me, you'll see later on when we do a little bit of detail work, keep everything, all right. You just never know when it's going to be useful.

All right, we've got this guy. What are we going to do? We're not going to cut the whole way through, because I want to use my Stanley knife wisely and make my life easier.

So I've got my Stanley knife here, I'm just going to cut through the first layer, all right. I'm going to do that across each of my lines. And as I said earlier on, I kept myself a little tab of of cardboard. Look, if you accidentally cut it off, again, I'll show you a workaround. Don't worry too much, but if you can remember to do that, that's great.

Now what I can do is use those outlines to help me in the construction of my box, easy, yeah? Now, if you've got a hot glue gun, what you will do, very carefully, is put yourself a line of hot glue. Trust me, you will only burn yourself once with a hot glue gun, and then forever more you will treat it with the respect it deserves. But try and get your hands out of the way.

And then using that tab, I've now got myself the building block for a totem pole. But what do we do if you don't have a lovely, big section of cardboard like that? Well, we've got here some squares. We could either do it by butting our joins up together and this is where masking tape is really useful, 20 minutes later, and I've now found the end of the masking tape. So luckily we whizzed through that using the wonders of technology.

I will just lay them down on the table to make my life a little bit easier. You can have a little bit of a gap there that'll make moving them around a little bit easier. And you can go through and masking tape like that, or if you plan out a little bit now, I've painted these just so that you can see a little bit easier on the camera. If you've got enough cardboard to do your 23 centimetres, or whatever measurement you decide you want your box to be, and can remember just to leave yourself two centimetres on each side, on two of your sides you can use those tabs. Fold them in and join our box together like that.

So you've got a couple of options there and you've got an awesome great big bit of cardboard, wonderful, you can do that method there. If you don't and you've only got smaller bits of cardboard, this is your go-to.

All right, when we come back, we're going to have a little bit of a look at our next step.

OK, giving you a little bit of time. Hopefully you've got a box made in one of those two or three methods that we showed you a moment ago. A bit wonky though, isn't it? A little bit unstable, and it's going to make it hard for me to work on.

So I'm going to make my life a little bit easier, and I'm going to make some little braces. Super easy to do, just get yourself a piece of cardboard that's got a right-angle on it. You don't have to worry too much. Cut yourself off a little triangle.

Now very carefully I'm going to put some glue down the edges. If you've got tape, you can do it with tape and, in fact, you're probably less likely to burn yourself with some tape doing this. And then I'm going to put this, and I'll just put it in there, and then I'll show you into the four corners of the box.

And once that has glued and dried in those corners, it's just going to make it a little bit more stable. We're going to make sure that this box doesn't wiggle around so much. So I'll give you a minute to do that and I'll do mine at the same time.

OK, welcome back. Hopefully you've now got a box, you've got some stabilising braces in there. We've got all kind of the bare bases if we will making a building, now we get into the fun stuff.

But I want you to think about this simple to complex. I don't know if you're like me and you get super excited about art making, but sometimes we get super excited we don't think things through. I want us to start with the simple things first, and then move our way through to the more complex bits and pieces.

So if we go back, I'm just going to grab my example here. Look, it's a bit overwhelming when you first look at it, but I'm going to show you how I built this up, layer by layer. The other thing I want to show you in this little section of episode two is using packers to pull your cardboard out and add some three-dimensionality to it.

So how do we go about starting? Look, there's no right or wrong way, and I think you can overthink it, but we want to get our big things in first. So if we're going to start with our face here and we want to put something down that maybe might be a starting point for our eyes, I'm going to just draw a big circular object on one half of my cardboard.

Now I've given myself some space here, and the reason is I want to make sure that this eye socket looks the same as this eye socket. And so the way that I'm going to do that is by using this as my template. So I'm going to very quickly cut this out, but I'm not going to cut it completely out. I'm just going to cut it to there.

And then, I don't have to try and do this again. I'm going to use the one I had already, I'm going to fold it over and I'm going to draw around it. Great, hey? So once again.

Now, when I've done things like this in the past, I've noticed that what generally throws students who are trialling this process is wanting it to be perfect straight away. I don't worry about that. I put it on there, is it too big? Do I want to change a little bit? I can do that.

So I'm going to struggle there to make that perfect both sides. So I'll fold over and I'll cut my two sides. Am I happy with that so far? I reckon that's a good start and I can start building out from there.

But I don't want to stick this down and just have it flat on the face of the box. I really want this to be built out. So how do we go about doing that? Here is one use for your off-cuts, but they have many uses.

I'm just going to get a bit of my off-cut, doesn't have to be neat here, just going get a long rectangle. I'm going to cut it up. There are no measurements here, because it will differ depending on the size of the object you're wanting to stick down.

I'm going to do three packers in thickness. So I'm just going to get a dab of glue, push that down, dab of glue, push that down. I'll put that over there for a minute and do that again.

Are they the same? No. Does it matter? No.

There's bigger things to worry about in the world, like have you got enough chocolate in the fridge? Have you got some snacks ready? I don't know, those are my priorities at the moment.

So I'm now going to glue these down. I don't really want to be able to see them, so I'm going to put them somewhere that visually is out of the way. Now, can you see, that is going to pull that face a little bit out. Now, your packers can be as many thicknesses of cardboard as you like. I'm generally working with the ones that I've been playing around with, with between two and three, but you could go up to five, and we've got a starting point there.

All right, talking about off-cuts, I'm going to see whether any of these would be useful to add on. And I think some of that's going to work ok, so I'm just going to grab that. I think that'll make a nice little eyebrow peek. And I know I've got another one over here that's similar, so let's just find, yep, cool. But if I didn't, I could use this as a template.

So off-cuts, I never chuck them in the bin until right at the end. Make a big mess and then later on you can worry about it. All right, again, I'm going to get some packers and I'm going to, this time I might just do two packers. Stick them on to my eyebrows, and we'll stick them down.

Now, the stuff we're doing at the moment is all flat. We're building it out with the packers. Don't worry too much. In our next episode, we're going to look at how to make more three-dimensional forms from the cardboard, things like horns, and ears, and really pulling out things like beaks.

What I want you to do, now that you've got some time, if you haven't made your box, go and make your box. If you haven't put your little corners in, go and put your corners in. And start having a play. Having a play means that you don't have to glue it down straight away. Try it on there, and if you don't like it, it's just a bit of cardboard, as we said earlier in this episode. You can go and try again.

Thank you very much for joining me on this episode. It's been really, really great fun. I'm going to go and have a bit of a play with mine. And I look forward to seeing you next episode when we can look at throwing in some three-dimensional shapes.