Creating Marquette Armature sculpture

Creating the Marquette was quite challenging and fun. The term "Armature" is when you create a solid structure for the sculpture to be built on whereas the term "Marquette" is what the sculpture is called. Before the Marquette could me made it had to be designed. My initial idea came from Nepalese masks which I saw in Nepal. I wanted to create a scary Marquette, therefore I gave it scary features such as horn, tusks, reptile skin. After the design had been created I had to create a stable structure so that the Marquette can be built, this is called the armature.

John (who taught us how to create the marquette) provided us with the fiber glass substance which we then added to the bottom of the armature which provided it with more strength so then it can hold the heavy weight of the clay. We then left the fiber glass to go solid. After it has been dried I then melted the friendly plastic onto the joint of the armature which provided the armature with more strength. I decide to create my marquette in a hollow structure as it uses less clay and also uses less weight. When creating the marquette it was quite hard as I never uses this type of media before and also due to the marquette being hollow it was hard to add detail as when pressed it created dents. I also had to look at how the human muscles and bones are structured in the face as it will provide marquette with realistic features.

After hours of building the marquette it was finally complete. It was then time for the colour to be added. Due to the clay being oil based the paint wouldn't work directly so the shellac had to be used before the paint was added. The purpose of using shellac is it shields the clay and makes the surface much drier so that the paint can be added. The painting colour I chose was green, red, white and brown. I got the colour choices form looking at different reptiles as most of them had green and muddy look. I decide to go for the acrylic paint not oil based paint as acrylic dries quicker. It was quite a easy process when applying the colour to the Marquette as I am use to doing paintings.



I was quite happy with the out come as it was my first time creating a marquette and using clay on my work. I will defiantly like to uses the media in the future as the media work quite well when creating a 3D module.