Video transcript
The Arts Unit @home Art Bites – Trash Totems – 3. Ditch 2D and push for 3D

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KATE STEHR: Hello again. Welcome back. Hopefully you've had a bit of time to have a bit of a play. My name's Kate, and I'm really, really pleased to have you back for this third episode of five in making a trash totem. I'm a head teacher at a high school in visual arts and also a sculptor myself, which is why I really wanted to have a bit of a play with you guys at pushing things out into the 3D.

So that's a really good segue into what we're going to do this episode, because although this is starting to look interesting-- and I've only worked on one side, of course-- it's still very flat. We're getting flat bits of cardboard. And even though we're using those little packers that I showed you last episode, it's still basically cutting out flat things and sticking flat things on top of flat things, which is a great starting point. But I definitely want to have a look now at building up some things, some geometric shapes.

Look, art is not just about art. Art also includes things like geometry and maths, believe it or not. And that's what we're going to look at today, a little bit of geometry, how we can turn a flat piece of cardboard into something that's a little bit more 3D. So I'm going to start with a horn. This might be a point in time when you decide, am I going to make more than one of these?

Look, I'm a little bit obsessive and I've really enjoyed making these, so I'm thinking that this guy's going to be my top, and I'm going to plunk him on top of there. And the guy underneath him, he doesn't really need to have a top on him. I can just glue these two sections together later on.

But if you decide, look, I just want to try one to start with, and I want it to have a top, now would be a time for you to get this structure. Just put it down upside down on top of a piece of cardboard, cut around it, and glue your top on. As I said, I'm just going to work with him without a top on at the moment, but I am going to want him to have some horns.

Now, I've made some horns here to show you. This one looks a bit like an ice cream cone more than a horn. And I'm going to show you how we go about making a horn from a flat piece of cardboard. For things like this, if you can find some of your thinner boxes-- and generally, your cereal boxes and things like that are a thinner cardboard than the stuff I've been working with here-- it's going to make your life a little bit easier.

So horns, this is where from our first episode, our bowls come into play. So the smaller your bowl is, the shorter your horn will be. So the diameter of your bowl indicates the height of your horn later on. Complex, eh? I want to make mine pretty tall. Look, that's going to end up with something around about that size.

You can go as big as you want. In fact, if you want to, you can get a pencil on a piece of string, tie a length of string to your pencil, and use that to draw as big a circle as you want. Or you can use templates within your house.

But just to make my life a little bit easier, I'm going to start with this metal bowl. Now, something I didn't mention in episode two-- which, look, it's just cardboard, so it's not the end of the world, but you might only have a limited amount of it-- is I often see when kids go to cut things out that they go to the centre of the piece of cardboard.

Hey, maybe push over to the edge and use your cardboard wisely so that you've got as much of it as you possibly can to work with later on. So I am going to quickly trace around my metal bowl, and then I'm going to cut that out.

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All right. So we have got our circle. Now, I want to fold it in half, and I'm going to cut it down that centre line. So I'm actually going to have half a circle. Now, if you start to roll your cone from here, it's probably going to be a bit fat down the bottom. And that's OK. That might be what you're looking for in terms of your design.

I want mine to be a little bit thinner and narrower. Now, there's no-- well, there is a science to this. But rather than get yourself too worked up about it, I'm just going to come to my centre point and fold again so I know where the half point is. And I'm just going to cut a little bit of a section off. Remember, you can't add this back on, but you can always cut more away, and try that again.

No, it's still a little bit too wide at the base for me. So I'm going to cut a little bit more off, and that is starting to look about what I'm thinking, OK? If you want yours skinnier or taller, again, if you want it taller, it'll need to be a wider circular starting point than this. And if you want it to be skinnier, you need to cut more of your section off your half circle.

So now, either using type or my hot glue gun, I'm going to join him together, again, being careful with the hot glue. I'm really hoping that you have managed to avoid getting yourself. Mine was cut a little bit wonky so I'm going to cut the bottom of that. And there we have how to make a cone.

Now, you can see he I've added another little three-dimensional element on here, because horns on many creatures in the wild have a little ridge. Not only are we doing geometry, and art, and maths. We're actually getting a natural history lesson here today, guys. It's amazing.

So to do something like that, we're not going to look at how we can make the cardboard curve a little bit easily. So I've got here a piece of cardboard. Now, I don't know how well the camera's going to be able to pick this up. But if you're home human you can't see this, have a look at the side of a piece of corrugated cardboard, and you'll be able to see this little waffle pattern, this little up and down pattern inside your two layers of cardboard, top and bottom.

Now, we can use that to our advantage, all right? We can use that to help us curve the cardboard. So where the waffle is going on short end, not on the long end. And you should be able to see the long lines. And it might be hard on the camera to pick up, but you'll see them in person. We're going to cut across the grain.

I'm just going to grab my ruler, and I'm going to cut myself off a strip. Now, I'll just do a demo first and then I'll show you how I put that ridge on the horn. Now, at the moment, not really curving that much. But if I use the side of the table and just roll that bit of cardboard back and forth, I can start to get some really lovely curves happening, OK?

So that's what I'm going to do with starting the ridge on my horn. I actually want a thinner section than that. I'm not going to try and get enough to do it in one go. It's going to be too hard, and there's no reason why I have to do that. It's just going to make my life difficult. And I'm going to put a tiny bit of glue, and I'm going to go from the bottom of my horn and gently press that down. Give it a second to sit. Don't get glue on your fingers.

And then I'm just going to come along every once in a while. And if you get a bit of excess glue, just use an off cut and scrape it away. Don't use your finger, because that will hurt. I'm going to keep on going up with our little strip of cardboard all the way up to the top until we have a ridged horn like that. Now, you can use that as a unicorn horn, because everyone loves unicorns. You can use it to have two horns, a little bit like a mountain goat. Options are endless.

You could use them, too, if you were doing a dragon-like totem, have them dotted in different sizes all over the side like spines. All right, so we've looked at how to make a horn. Have a little bit to play with that. Pause the video now. And then when we come back, we're going to look at how we do a few more three-dimensional shapes.

Welcome back. I hope you've had an opportunity to have a bit of a play and try and make a horn. What I want to talk back in a little bit more detail now is the making of curves. So as I mentioned, we're looking for these lines that run up the length of corrugated cardboard. You're not going to find it with the cereal boxes.

You definitely have to have something like a packing box here, or going to that wonderful hardware store, and going into their stockpile of boxes, and taking a few from there. They're more than happy for you guys to do that. What I want to use is these natural properties of the cardboard to build some more three-dimensionality onto my totem pole.

So I'm going to draw myself a line just down the centre of a bit of cardboard. I'm not going to measure this one, because I'm just going to play a little bit here. And what I want to do is draw a little bit of a curve shape. I'm going to make a bit of a giant ear-like shape here, a curved ear shape.

Now, if you remember back to earlier in this lesson, I'm not going to try and get the other side perfect. I don't need to. I'm going to use the cardboard as a template to help me. I'm just going to lightly score that. But sometimes, it'll just bend by itself. And I might score that again. All right, so draw around that.

Now, definitely cutting twice today, but that's OK. I want to show you something. I here have done this the wrong way on purpose. I can't actually bend this the way that I want to. And I don't know if you can see from your shot where you are, but the reason is that I put my lines in the wrong way.

So I'm just going to take a second. I'm going to cut it out the right way, and I'm going to show you the difference in what we can do, OK? Look pretty much the same. I'm not sure from your angle, you might be able to see here the lines because of the shadows that one of them, the corrugations go lengthways, and one of them, the corrugations go crossways. I want the crossways.

I'm now going to use, again, the edge of my table. And I'm just going to roll my shape over the edge of the table. And what I'm doing is breaking down the corrugations a little bit, which starts to give me these awesome curves. Now, I can use them as they are. So let's bring our work in progress back over.

And I can start to work around the sides of my box, because we don't want to think of these as a front, side, back. This is a sculpture. It works in the round. And we really want to be thinking about all of our pieces working and moving around the box. So you can see there that I can now either put a packing block in there or leave it just hanging out for now and join it back in later on.

And I'm starting to get a really great shape. It's starting to move out into three-dimensional space. Why have 2D when you can have 3D is my motto. So before I glue this down-- and trust me, you'll do it once or twice-- and then remember, I'm going to use this as my template to cut out my wing, or ear, or spine, or whatever it is that you want to make. I'm going to use my original one as a template.

Now, if you want it to be identical, I'm just going to show you that when you flip-- so this guy here, I want him to be the same on this side. So if I want to put this down on the cardboard as a template, I'm going to have to flip it upside down, which is easy for me at the moment, because one side's got a mark on it. I'm going to remind myself which way the corrugations go, draw round, and cut out.

Now, very quickly before we end this episode, I just want to show you what you can also do to make these even more three-dimensional. Again, you want to get corrugations in the right place, which those ones aren't. So I'll just cut myself quickly a little strip. And what I can do very carefully is edge these shapes in, all right?

So run a little line of glue. I'm not worried about the length, because I can always cut it. And start edging this shape, and just hold it in place for a minute. Now, if I did that on both sides, and then put another on side there, you can see I'm really starting-- this is not becoming a flat two-dimensional sculpture anymore.

We're really starting to build out some three-dimensional shapes. Now, again, it's cardboard. Have a play around. This episode has been quite a lot of information, so have a play at the horns. Have a play at building some 3D shapes and building some curves. And we'll see you in episode four, where we're going to start to polish our finished sculpture.

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