Making A Maquette/Patter For A Metal Flower Sculpture

I previously made a Mason Bee nesting unit as a metal floral sculpture. It is featured in the 2016 Sculpture in the Garden exhibit at the North Carolina Botanical Garden.

Many times, it is useful to create a maquette (a 3D sketch of the intended sculpture) to aid in the visualization and design of the piece. Often, the maquette is smaller than the final sculpture. Sometimes, a full size maquette is made and also serves as a pattern for laying out the image on metal.

For this exercise, I used construction paper to create a maquette/pattern for a metal flower sculpture. I used a commercially available Mason Bee nesting unit as a size reference. It is 6.5 inches long and 3.25 inch diameter. 

I used a piece of construction paper (50 x 65 cm) as the building material. I used the bee nest case to form the trumpet of the flower.

I rolled the paper around the tube to define the trumpet template.

The trumpet template was shaped with scissors.

I then secured the shape with artist's tape. The tape is basically used on the paper where welds or rivets will be used with metal.

I cut a petal and a petiol, and used them at as pattern for five more of each.

I taped the petals and petiols. 

After taping on the trumpet, I shaped the petals to form a 3D maquette.

I deconstructed the maquette to lay out the intended sculpture pattern on a steel sheet. This facilitated the efficient use of valuable materials.