By ALESHA CAPONE
THE birth of a baby elephant inspired a nine-year-old Keilor pupil to create an award-winning artwork.
Grade 3 student Isabelle entered her green papier-mache elephant named Marley into a recent art show at St Augustine’s Primary School.
Out of more than 100 entries, Isabelle won the school’s overall art prize.
Isabelle said she was inspired to make her artwork in honour the young elephant Mali, who was born at Melbourne Zoo in 2010.
A judge who visited St Augustine’s to pick the winner of the artistic competition described Isabelle’s sculpture as “eye-catching, detailed unique” and “one of a kind”.
“I thought I wasn’t creative, but when I won I thought I was creative,” Isabelle said.
After she places first in the contest, Isabelle received a prize pack including 60 pencils and other artistic materials.
“I felt surprised because my friends came running up to me and then started to say I’d won,” she said.
“My favourite subject is art because I get to do creative things.”
Classes at St Augustine’s also created individual entries for the art show like a candy buffet, a tsunami wave and a beach scene – which Isabelle’s brother Noah helped to make.
“I thought it was amazing because everyone had different ideas,” Isabelle said.
She said the hardest part of making her elephant came before she applied the papier-mache layer.
“It would probably have been making the body because I had to scrunch the paper up, make it right and put sticky-tape on it to hold it together,” she said.
Isabelle said she hoped to become a graphic designer or an artist in the future.
