Build-A-Frog Workshop

I'm asked over and over, "How did you do that?"  Here is a pictorial breakdown of the steps involved in making my Big-Eyed Tree Frog paper sculpture.

The base is first.  This one is just called "mud".  If you look closely, graduations of brown color is evident.  This was glued and pressed on to illustration board.

Real leaves were collected and scanned into my computer.  A watercolor effect was applied to the leaves.  They were printed on archival paper with a professional printer and cut out.  Brown inks were applied to the edges of each leaf so they would not look like paper.

The paper leaves were strategically glued to the "mud" base.

On to the frog.  I start with a rough sketch on very thin paper.  I keep refining the sketch until I can make one with very clean lines.  Clean lines are important to me because it will eventually be cut out with the sharp point of an X-Acto knife. 

Here is the sketch with skin patterns added.

The sketch is separated into the pieces that will be cut out in order to make the paper sculpture frog.  This sheet is resized with about 5 to 7 copies printed.

Here are the colors created in Photoshop.  This sheet is printed on archival paper and printed on a professional printer.  The sketches from the previous step are used to accurately cut out each piece.  Colored inks are used to match the colors and color the edges so the frog pieces don't look like paper.

Here is the finished piece.  The pieces of the paper sculpture Big-Eyed Tree Frog is glued together using Sobo glue.  This glue is perfect because it is thick (paper doesn't buckle), clear and rubbery.  The head of the frog is propped up on a little archival foam core to give it an even more 3D appearance.