My goose ready for the the Robert Davies animal sculpture workshop

Robert Davies Goose

The Robert Davies drawing exhibition depicts a range of animals who are considered to best of breed contrasted with animals who have been intensely  reared who have now been rescued. Robert captures the character of each of the animals in his drawings.

Winchester Discovery Centre asked me  to provide animal sculpture workshops for families responding to his work.
We created chickens, geese, pigs, cows, sheep and horses.

 Because the sculptures needed to be  ready to take away within a three hour time frame I use papier mache principles with mud rock using mud rock as the outer layers.

My goose after the workshop

I created templates for each of the animals that Robert had drawn allowing participants to choose the one that they liked the best.

I also created this goose sculpture as an example and a pig which I worked on during the sessions. 

 To make the goose I  cut a body, head and neck, two wings and feet from thick cardboard. I taped the head neck and body together treating this as one piece and then padded  it and the wings with  scrunched newspaper and covered with masking tape.

 The feet were made large to ensure stability these wire fastened to wire legs.


All of the pieces were covered with two layers of mud rock and joined together, further  detail was added with smaller pieces.
The families took more mud rock home with them so that they could do another layer and repair any damage that might occur on the way home.I have advised the students to leave it to dry ( 2- 3 days)  before they decorate it .

Now that the workshops have run I intend to finish my goose ( when I find he time and  use a mix of plaster and pva glue as a final coat. once this is dry I will sand it down and paint it with acrylics.
I will share post a photograph of the piece when it is completed.