How to Make an Egyptian Canopic Jar Statue Part 1

How to Make an Egyptian Canopic Jar Statue Part 1 Now we’re going to travel to Egypt and hopefully ancient Egypt which is an incredibly interesting culture. It’s been said that art that was created during the ancient times in Egypt was referred to as art for the dead. And truly, everything that the Egyptian artist made really was meant for the dead. Their whole structure of the way that they believed life and death, and the way they were connected to each other was really kind of the basis for all their art. And because they believed that she went to an after life, when you were buried you have to have a lot of things to take with you, so that when you went to the next world you would be able to do the same things that she did on the earth you’d be able to do in the after life. So Pharaohs really went all out to create things and have things made that could be buried in their tombs with them. One of the things that they used were they would make little sculptures, statues that would also come alive and this is a little paper Mache statue that’s kind of a combination between, just a little spirit kind of bird that protecting bird and for those of you who are already familiar with the mummification process. You’ll notice that this little sculptured kind of looks like a canopic jar. And you remember that when they got ready to actually prepare a corpse for mummification they would remove the internal organs and each organ would be place in a different canopic jar. There were four different jars that had the four brothers of Horus were the guardians of those organs because it was really important after you died that the spirit would be able to find the body again because every night the spirit would leave the tomb and go wander around and then in the morning it had to recognize the mummy again, so the organs had to be there. The mummy had to be all intact so that the person could be united again with his soul. So we’re going to go ahead and we’re actually going to create this little paper Mache canopic jars/guardian figures. This one is kind of reminiscent of Isis or the Ba bird and those of you who know a lot about Egyptian art will know that the Ba bird is the little bird that hovers over the mummy and served as a protector. So what you’re going to need to do this project you’re going to need some kind of paper cups, plastic cups, Styrofoam cups, it really doesn’t matter. You’re going to need some masking tape, a roll of paper towels, some old newspapers so right here I just have some news print paper probably some tag board or some kind of cardboard to make wings and things that we might add. Some Polymer medium gloss medium, okay. Some of maybe used to using like paper Mache paste or water down Elmer’s glue, any of those things are fine. Gloss medium works for me if there something you feel more comfortable with that’s fine too. Also on your DVD they will be available for you when you get to the decorating part. Pages of Egyptian patterns that you can actually work from they’re be really helpful when you start decorating your finish project. We’re going to start with the two paper cups and you just need some pebbles, or even sand just something for inside the cups just take to give it some weight because if you listened there’s actually rocks on the bottom up here that helps stabilize this guy while you’re working on them otherwise, it can have a tendency that it tip over just while working on it. And going to get some paper towels out here actually I might put some towels down just to work on top of a man. We’re actually going to use a paper towels for the paper Mache instead of doing the old strips in newspaper then this is not quite as messy as the old Muppet. And I’ll go ahead and out some paper towels in here, so that our rock stone rattle so we’re just going to stuff with some paper pile and cover it like this. Now this doesn’t have to be beautiful what you’re doing now because it’s all going to be covered. Okay, what we’re actually making here is called an armature. It’s kind of a form that artists make a basic form and then other materials are added onto it to make the final sculpture. Okay, so now we are going to —I just cut his paper cup, and as you start to work with these materials. I know you’re going to come up with different ways to use them. I think I’m going to put this head on maybe facing back this way just for fun. And I’m just going to put some paper inside of there. I just want to tilt his head back a little bit making look kind of proud. And while I’m working on this I’m also kind of thinking ahead about what she’d wings. I really like the idea of birds. There all kinds of images of birds in Egyptian art there’s Isis, the wing goddess whose always shown with her wings spread straight out as she walk into a tomb. Isis would be there, as she walked through an entry way because she was there to protect you on your journey to the next life. She shown a lot with her wings spread out across the mummy sarcophagus because she is there to protect the mummy in his or her journey to the next life. Let’s put a tail on here and you think what I’m going to do is I’m just going to use some paper towels, and we’re going to just build out a little back side here and tape it. The better taping job you do the less work you have to do in the actual paper Mache. As far as looting out areas so you want to kind of making your armature pretty, fairly accurate, so that things are taped down and they’re not big wrinkly blobs sticking out wherever and to save your extra work on the next step.