Paper Mache Eye

I'm taking anatomy a little more sculptural in the this (and at least one follow-up) post.  I want to make a paper mache eye.  And not just any type of eye.  I have a few restrictions - the eye has to be on a 4" x 4" board.  I want to include a light at the back.  I want the retina to be translucent but the sclera to be mostly opaque.  I'm including thread as vessels in the eye.  I'm working out how to make the cornea too...


So, I've tried one eye and it worked out... okay.  Not fantastic, but a good first concept.  I also learned that paper maché takes forever.

Much of what I've been trying has been inspired by The Ultimate Paper Mache blog and her book, Make Animal Sculptures with Paper Mache Clay.  I haven't actually used the clay yet, although it looks super cool.  But I've found some great information about different types of paper mache binders and papers to use.  Now, here's the different things I've tried out on my first couple of rejected eyes.

This first attempt was pure glue directly on the balloon.  It didn't work.  At all.  But, it was a good experience.  I did some more reading and found about things like shells and masking tape and mixtures and such.

So, I scrapped the first balloon and moved on to a second attempt.  This one I actually taped down to a 4" x 4" piece of cardboard.  And I then used lotion to cover the tape.  This will (theoretically) make the eye structure separate from the mold much easier in the future.

I also switched to a glue/water mixture - roughly 1 part water for 4 parts glue.  Very roughly.

So, I've covered my taped and lotioned up balloon with yellow tissue paper and the paper maché glue mixture.  At this point, I'm not really planning on the actual eye.  I'm mostly testing things out  I don't even know if tissue paper will make the type of translucent retina that I am going for.


I do know that I want to use a mixture of yellow and orange tissue paper combined with red thread to make the retina.  Probably.

Right now I have this slightly strange expectation that the back of the eye will be along one side of this rounded square.  I'm not sure what I was thinking, but that was what I had fixated in my mind at the time.  So, I started to grow my vessels from that area, as they would have been carried through the optic channel.  That's what I get for poor planning...

I am laying the thread on and covering it with orange paper.  I already have around 3 layers of yellow paper on. The construct is kinda stiff, but still bendable.  I am using a space heater to dry the layers faster at some points.

I've started to try and add a sclera on half the eye.  I added more vessels under the white... as is apparent.  However, even with three layers of white, I'm not seeing much of any white.  It did give me a great idea for the cornea though.

And then I got a little... too enthusiastic to get that white look.  I think for the future, I need to be very, very patient and build up the thin layers of paper.  This just doesn't look right, and you can barely see any vessels underneath.

I put another layer of vessels on and a different type of white paper over it.  It's still not thin enough, but it was better.  After thinking about it, I'm not too upset about needing 15 million layers of white tissue paper- actual sclera is pretty thick compared to the retina.






And another lesson in patience.  Instead of relying upon the space heater for drying purposes, I tried to put the mostly dry eye into the oven.  It didn't work.  My understructure completely collapsed.

Neat balloon and tape texture from the broken understructure.

I cut the eye from the base.  This is a view of the inside, no pupil.

You can see some of the vessels better once that paper was dry.  I added in some linseed oil to the paper maché paste in these last few layers.  It gave it a great sheen and a bit more transparency.

Let there be light!  My little drawer light looks pretty cool in there.  I have some ideas on how to be able to turn a battery powered light on and off from outside the eye, but I'll go into more detail on those when I actually start to implement them.

And a view with the overhead light off.  Even the sclera has just a bit of bleed through.  As such, it may need a solid red layer underneath it to give a better color under the white.










Well, that first eye was a lot of fun.  And it taught me a great deal about paper maché and binding mixtures, etc.  My hands also smell like a strange combination of linseed oil, soap, glue, and coco butter lotion...

However, one thing I definitely noticed right off was that I didn't have a great plan on that first eye.  I didn't lay the tape out well, so the wrinkles formed from the tape carried through the tissue paper layers.  I was lazy and used large strips of paper.  These wrinkled quite a bit, going over the curves of the balloon.  So, smaller bits it is.  And I need to figure out what I want to do with the iris before I actually start the build.

I did some very, very simple sketches of an eye to better understand the underlying anatomy. 


There is the pupil area, which is just a hole.  And it will be a hole in this build as well.  It will let the light through and it will allow people to see the painted back surface after the eye is done.  (Because the paper maché is just half of an eye, the back half will be painted onto the flat piece of board the eye is going to be mounted on.)

Then we have the iris itself.  I think I want this eye to be blue, as that will contrast with the orange retina the best.  However, I want some color variation, not just plain blue tissue paper, so I hope that turns out okay.  We'll see, as I start to build up the color.  I'm not expecting the iris to be transparent at all.

I'm not going to be simulating the cilliary body or the lens.  At least, I'm not planning to at this point.  It would be very tough.  I would have to find some sort of clear oval object to hang, or sew, directly behind the pupil.  And I don't really want to obscure the view of the back of retina.  Hmm...  Nope, not planning on including it right now.

The retina actually has an area that is 'nonvisual' and I think I'm going to try to use color to differentiate it.  It's directly ancillary to the iris, which makes perfect sense if you think about it.  It's not depicted well in many images, but I'm going to try to make it a reddish blueish orangish color.  We'll see.  I want it to blend well with the rest of the retina while still being distinct. I'm thinking that it would be pretty awesome to blend the transparency as well, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that part.

And finally we have the retina and sclera layers.  The retina I will be adding to the entire eye.  That way the inside of the eye will be completely contiguous with the drawing on the back of the illustration board.  The sclera will only cover half of the eye, as it did in the original concept.

I've started working on a third balloon, and I'll expound upon that as I work more on it.