Introduction: Making a Dragon Dog Head (inspired by a Chinese Dragon)
Hi, we are students in middle school, in this instructable we will be teaching you how to create a quick and easy dog head! We built a dog head to attach to a dog body, like the Chinese Dragon tradition. We decided to do a dog head since we were building the float for a non-profit business called ‘The Rescued Dog’, luckily it is also the Year Of The Dog!
We built this for a parade called the “Ocean Beach Holiday Parade.” We want the community to know about the business and we want more people adopt or foster dogs. The Rescued Dogs mission is to save at-risk dogs from high-kill shelters and place them in loving forever homes. We are all 7th graders at a school named, ‘High Tech Middle Media Arts’ which is a project based learning school located in San Diego.
We then used a computer program called Rhino to design our scaled drawing. We sent the scaled drawing to the laser cutter. We had to make sure everything was connected and had the right measurements. When each person was finished creating a scaled drawing of their component, it got checked over and was then sent to the laser cutter to get cut out on a piece of cardboard. We did this because we wanted to create a scale model of our float. We also needed to, so that we could present it to the non-profit business, but it's not needed to create the dog head.
Materials:
- 1 Pencil
- 4’ x 4’ Butcher Paper
- 1 Scissor
- 1 small Glue bottle
- 3 pieces of 4x4 ft Cardboard
- 1 tape measure
- 1 roll of Chicken wire
- 8 Newspapers
- 1 bottle of Sta-Flo (liquid starch)
- 1 bottle of brown paint
- 1 small bottle of red paint
- 1 small bottle of pink paint
- 1 small bottle of white paint
- 1 small bottle of blue paint
- 2 Paintbrushes
Each group presented their idea and scaled model to the business, they ended up picking an idea of doing a Chinese Dragon with a dog head, and a mechanical moving float. We quickly were assigned the float component that we were making, which for us was the dog head.
Step 1: STEP ONE: Sketching Your Dragon Dog Head
STEP ONE:
First you need to use butcher paper to create a drawing that you will cutout and glue onto a piece of cardboard. We used the dimensions of 3’ x 2½’ for the head and the ears were 2’.
Once you are done sketching out your dog head on the butcher paper, cut out your drawing carefully, with the scissors.
Use a glue bottle to glue the paper outline of your sketch to a piece of 4x4 cardboard.
Cut the cardboard around the paper so that you have an outline of your dog head made out of cardboard.
Step 2: STEP TWO: Molding Your Dragon Dog Head With Chicken Wire
You then are going to cover your outline in chicken wire, measure out the chicken wire with the tape measure, 5’ for the neck (once in a circle it's about 3’. this took us about 4 ½ hours to do. Make sure you take your time on this and everything connects well. It was probably the most challenging part of making the whole dog head!
Step 3: Step 3: Start Your Paper Mache
When you are finally finished with the chicken wire, you will pour the Sta-Flo, which is liquid detergent into a bowl, then rip some pieces of newspaper up. You now are going to start paper mache-ing! Something that I recommend doing it to put something under the chicken wire structure, we used cardboard. I recommend this because the Sta-Flo can get messy.
Start paper mache-ing, dip a piece of ripped newspaper fully into the Sta-Flo, take it out and lay it on the chicken wire, repeat until one whole side is done. Larger pieces take longer to dry and sometimes don’t stick. Takes about 1 whole day to dry.
After paper mache is dry and stuck on to the chicken wire flip the dog head and start paper macheing the other side. Do the step again, but on opposite side that isn’t covered in newspaper. Make sure all spots are covered! Wait a day again, for paper mache to dry.
Step 4: Step 4: Painting
My group decided to use clay for the mouth but I suggest to just paint the dog head. Pick a can of paint for the dog head, we used brown. Cover the whole dog head with paint except for the eyes, mouth, and tongue.
Step 5: Step 5: Using Clay
My group decided to use clay for the mouth but I suggest to just paint the dog head. Pick a can of paint for the dog head, we used brown. Cover the whole dog head with paint except for the eyes, mouth, and tongue.
Paint the mouth red, and the tongue a lighter red or a pink. Make sure everything is covered.
Paint the teeth and eyes with a color of your choice, we chose blue and white for the eyes. Then YOU’RE DONE!!!
In conclusion, this is how to make a pretty quick dog head ! The dog head came out super well, I hope this Instructable helped you create a dog head too! I also hope that this Instructable made it super easy for you to make a dog head! Here is a link to the body of the dog.