Paper Mâché Owl Project Completed - Final Photos

It has been a long journey.  I started this project in January of this year.  I don't keep track of the hours spent because it feel as if it would be discouraging.  However, based on the date, I would estimate that all in all it took about ninety hours.  I tried to find time to work on it at least two to three hours each week.  There may have been a couple of weeks I missed due to travel; and some that I worked more than three hours, so this is my best guess.  

Below is a brief synopsis of how the owl was made, but I suggest that you go to my blog and read the individual posts if you plan to attempt this project or to view my other projects.  folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com

I started this project with a basic curved template I drew to make a silhouette image of the side of the bird.  From there I cut out heavy corrugated cardboard pieces to create the sides, back, breast, and underbelly.  The cardboard pieces are held together by tape.  I stuffed the inside with paper just to make sure it had enough bulk inside to keep the body from shifting or collapsing under its weight.

Tape was used to cover the entire body as a waterproofing measure.  After that, the carcass was covered in a product called Press and Seal to further waterproof the cardboard.  (I have had an unfortunate cardboard project fail once when using cardboard, so I tend to go overboard on waterproofing now.)  Then another layer of tape for good measure.  

After the body was made, I added the head, which was created separately.  It took a fair amount of folding and slicing of the cardboard to make the neck fit into the body cavity.  The head began as a ball of aluminum foil.  There is also some aluminum foil in the beak.

Other than foil, the only other metal in the bird is wire used to shape the legs, feet, and talons.  The owl appears to be strutting.  I was having trouble getting the owl to balance on its feet.  I had not planned on making it strut, that is just how it worked out in the end.  Sometimes you have to know when to let the project tell you what it needs.  

Each feather was drawn and cut out individually.  I used a thinner cardboard for the feathers, but it was to heavy to cut out more than one feather at a time. The weight was about the weight of the type of cardboard that comes sometimes when purchasing shirts or poster board.  Each feather was glued to the owl individually.   Most of the time I used tweezers to hold onto the feather while I added hot glue to the back and placed it on the bird.

Finally, I arrived at the painting part of the project.  Hours and hours of painting.  Two coats of gesso were used to give a solid white for painting and priming.  Then I had a couple of painting missteps.  I started to paint the breast, belly, and tailfeathers first to figure out my painting method during a marathon painting session.  Unfortunately, I did not take a step back and look at the work.  If I had, I would have realized that it looked too uniform.   I started over again and mixed a lot of color that I hoped would give me a medium brown.  However, overnight it dried to an almost olive green.  So I had to start once again.  

At least I learned from my mistakes.  This time I mixed on the pallet instead of trying to make a more uniform color.  I was using burnt umber, ultramarine blue and white to make a gray for the background.  The next step was to try to imitate an owl's coloring by tapping on blotches of paint.  Some of the blotches are dark, mixed from burnt umber and ultramarine blue.  Other blotches are a lighter color made my mixing white gesso (titanium white looked to chalky.) and raw sienna.  Since the colors were not always mixed at the same value, they give an overall impression of light and shadow.  After all, the main purpose of the owl's coloring is to give it camouflage.   

The eyes were reverse painted on glass cabochons.  It took a couple of sets of eyes to paint some that I liked.  Patience has been a virtue on this project.  

Why did I start this project? Believe me, it took so long I was
asking this myself quite frequently towards the end of it.  Actually, there were multiple reasons.  Primarily, I was tired of making paper  mâché pumpkins and needed a change.  (Check my blog for those posts.) 

I used inexpensive home decorating glass pieces rather than the more expensive scrap booking cabochons.  They are not quite as regular in shape or size, so some care needs to be taken to make sure that they pieces match.  Other than that, they were fine. 

Another part is that I wanted to challenge myself with a complicated project.  A third aspect is that an owl is a Halloween type project, so I stayed within my comfort zone while trying something completely different.  And finally, I look at the wonderful, beautiful, diverse wildlife that inhabits our planet.  I try to reproduce what the owl looks like just to give the viewer a moment to ponder just what an amazing creature an owl really is.  People are always so busy, that most of the time that they forget to stop and look at the wild life around them.  If this sculpture can get them to think about what else is in the world if only for a moment; all this                        work was worth it. 

Paper Mâché Owl - Part 22 - Painting Continued

I tried to get this last coat of paint on the owl, but only partially succeeded.  I have one side, the back, and a portion of the front painted.  It takes a long time to paint each of those feathers individually.  I have to stop every so often and change focal points.  But I am thinking that I am closing in on finishing this project.  

The final coat of paint is a mixture of white gesso and raw sienna.  I used gesso rather than titanium white because the titanium white tends to make the white look chalky.  The gesso still has some chalkiness to it, but not nearly as badly as the titanium.  

The head came out a little lighter than I would have liked.  I may have to go back in and add some browner tones to it.  When I look at it up close I can see that it just looks a little muddy. The head is supposed to be a little lighter than the body, but this time I think I made it a little too light.

I still have to paint the face, white collar, and talons.  That will be the end of this project.  I will show my final pictures on this post hopefully next week.  

Overall, I am pleased with how this project is coming together.

Check back late next Tuesday.  I usually try to get the post up by early morning, but lately my schedule has not been working well with this.  I hope to do better with the upcoming post.  Apologies to those who have checked early on Tuesday mornings.

Paper Mâché Owl - Part 21 - Getting Closer to Finishing the Paint

The owl is still a work in progress.  The initial underpainting came out a little more of an olive green rather than an olive brown, so I had to paint over that with a second coat of paint.  The body is painted, but I have not had time to work on the face area yet.  However, I am much happier with this layer of paint.  

The new color is a smoke gray.  I worked it into the feathers; leaving the previous dark spots.  The gray took away some of the hard edges from the dark paint.  This color has a nice camouflage effect to it.  The dark patterns make a great background for the next layer of paint.  

I am still working on bringing up the color.  The next layer will be spots of dark brown paint, probably burnt umber.  After that, there will be a layer of off white paint, probably a mixture of white an raw sienna.  I have not settled on that last color yet.  I will have to experiment to see which color combination looks best.  

It begs the question of how many coats of paint I plan to add to the bird.  Once the white paint is finished, I will start the final painting of the face, throat, and talons.  The face and the white feathers at the throat look a little chalky.  I had initially used titanium white.  It just did not look as I wanted so I brushed over it with some raw sienna.  It looked better, but still chalky.  I plan on using a different white on the next attempt.

I think it will be one or two more weeks before the project is finished.  I am looking forward to its completion.  I have spent seven months on this project so far.   

 

Paper Mâché Owl -Part 20 - Underpainting Completed

The holiday has passed and I have finished the underpainting.  We are having some really hot weather here and it has been conducive to staying inside.  Earlier this week we had temperatures at or above 100 degrees Fahrenheit with heat indexes sometimes going as high as 110 degrees.  It has been pretty miserable outside.

So, I have been working for hours to try to get the underpainting finished.  Some of it came out as I liked and some did not.  I mixed up a lot of paint, because I wanted the color to be consistent over the while body of the owl.  I knew that it was going to take multiple days to paint the owl because it takes a long time to paint each individual feather.  I worked and worked to try to get the color I wanted for the painting.  I used the better part of three tubes of paint trying to blend the paint to get the color to come out a brownish color.  It looked right when I first mixed it, although I expected it to dry darker.  When dry the color came out a brownish-olive color.  Not exactly what I was hoping for.  However, it is only the underpainting.  There is going to be another layer or two of paint on it before it is finished.  At least it looks a little more like an owl now.  

I have already started on the next paint layer, but do not have any photos of it yet.  I actually hope to have the owl finished by time for the next blog post on Tuesday, July 16th. 

Paper Mâché Owl - Part 19 Painting Progress

I have not posted in a couple of weeks.  I apologize to my regular viewers.   We had family visit, took a trip, and an elder care issue and it had me tied up for quite a while.  Today, I am still trying to catch up after all of that.  However, I did manage to do a little painting on the back of the owl.  

The painting on the back is not finished.  It only has the initial coat of dark color on it.  I will be painting in a yellowish/brownish gray to fill in the white areas of the back and head.  

The paining on the front of the owl does not match the back at this point.  Earlier posts showed a reddish color that I was never satisfied with.  I had also tried to match the pattern of owl feathers, but as I remarked earlier, it appeared too uniform.  I tried to dab on darker spots of paint to change to a more random look, but it just did not seem to work.  Once I found a dark color for the back it was clear that the values were not compatible.  I plan to repaint the front of the owl once I have the back completely painted.

Photo:  Failed painting of front.

I found that randomly dabbing the paint did a better job of imitating an owls pattern than trying to paint each feather the same pattern.  It just looks more natural.  If I can just get the right value of gray for the rest of the back, I have some hope that this owl is going to look a lot like I anticipated.

Anyway, once again, sorry for the delay in posting and for such a quick post this week.  I have a lot going on, but it is starting to settle down.

Paper Máché Owl - Part 18- Painting Progress

 I wanted to get the paint on the feet before I painted the bird.  I did not want to be dropping a different color paint on top of feathers that had been painted.  In fact, I have painted the feet four times to get something I think I can live with.  The pictures of great horned owls that I have been looking at show that their feet are a yellowish brown color. That color was hard to match.  And then, I ended up with a contrast problem once I did start painting the feathers.

The first time I painted the owl's feet, it seemed close to what I wanted, but needed a second coat because the paint did not cover well.  I painted a second coat, and thought all was well.  Then, once I started painting the feathers, the color of the feet did not look right.  So, it was back to the feet once again.  I think I can live with this color.  In the long run, if the feet still look off, I am going to take some artistic license and paint them gray/brown as some other owls feet look.

I am about 10 hours in on painting the owl.  The painting is somewhat labor intensive.  Each feather is painted individually.  On the belly and breast of the owl each owl has three brown streaks and two streaks that are white(ish).  I tap in the three brown streaks (raw and burnt sienna and white) and then come back in with white and tap against the brown edges to create an off-white color.  

I will say that this part of the owl is not finished.  I will next go back in and tap in some areas of dark and light color to break up the pattern a little bit.  That was always the plan, but when I was taking some pictures for this post, I noticed that the pattern was a little bit too uniform.   I did not realize that sooner because I was focusing on one feather at a time and trying to paint a jagged chevron shape.  Because I did not step back and take a look while I was painting, I just did not see how the chevrons evenly the chevrons were lining up.  

After taking the pictures, I went back and over painted some of those linear patterns to break it up a bit.  Now I am thinking that maybe that was a bit too much of the brown color.  However,  I can correct that if necessary while I paint on some more of the patterns for that area.  I have not taken any new photos since then.  

It is going to take a while to get this bird painted.  I will keep blogging about my progress.  Check back next Tuesday.  I will try to have the post up earlier.  I try to get it set up and ready to publish early Tuesday mornings, but this time it did not work out.  At least it is up on Tuesday.

Paper Mâché Owl - Part 17- The Painting Begins

I am back from a vacation, and I have just caught up things enough at home that I have time to sit down and paint.  But before starting to paint, I had to experiment with paint colors, strokes, and color combinations to determine how best to paint the owl.

I began by coating a piece of cardboard with two layers of gesso.  I drew a few rough feather shapes on it and started trying different colors and patterns for the feathers.  I stopped to take a picture during this phase.  I did more testing after that, but I wanted to make sure I snapped at least one picture of the tests.  Sometimes I get too busy and work to the last minute and forget to take a picture.  

 I needed to experiment a little more on just how I wanted the feathers to look.  I spent some time on the internet looking at images of owls.  It was surprising just how individual the feathers of owls are.  It made me feel better to think with that much individuation that I was not going to be doing it "wrong".

After I decided what color combinations I wanted to use, I started painting the owl on the underside of the feathers of the tail.  That area is the least likely to be seen when the bird is standing upright.  This gave me a little time to determine where the colors should be placed and how to create the striated pattern before it made it up to the more visible areas of the owl.  

I settled on a mixture of 5 parts Burnt Sienna, 4 parts Raw Sienna, and two parts Titanium White for my color pallet for the brown portion of the feathers.  The lighter part of the feathers is straight Titanium White.  (I had originally tried a mixture of Raw Sienna and Titanium White, but it kept coming out more of a pink color than I cared to use.)  It was important for me to have a formula as it will take quite a few days to paint the owl and I needed to be able to reproduce the color mixture over multiple days.  

The next thing I had to consider was texture.  I felt that if I just painted it flatly, it would not look as much like real feathers.  I decided that even though I was using acrylics that I would use inexpensive oil and enamel paint brushes.  I don't know where or how I ended up with these brushes.  I think I may have purchased them by accident when I went to look for some cheap child watercolor brushes.  I use them for applying glue sometimes.  Anyway, here were these paintbrushes with stiff plastic bristles and they seemed just what I needed at the moment.  I have been using these brushed to dab on the paint.

For each feather, I would tap the paintbrush into the brown mixture and tap on some of the paint in four uneven stripes across the feather.  Then I would wipe out the brush and tap in some of the plain white on the rest of the figure.  The white would mix a little bit with the brown in these areas to form a lighter brown color.  Once all the paint had been tapped in on the feather, I would brush upward with a very light stroke.  The stiff bristles would smear the paint and make it look less like distinct bands of color.  Sometimes, if I had added too much white, I would go back and tap in a little more brown paint.

After a feather was painted, I used a small pick tool (think dental instrument) and scratched in a few lines.  The lines helped give the feather the illusion of more texture.  It also visually broke up the bands of color. All in all, I think it makes the feather look a little more dimensional.

I am actually a little further along than is shown in the picture above.  This was my first stopping point.  Since then, I have given the owl's feet a first coat of paint and completed two more rows of the feathers.  Since each feather is treated individually, it takes a few minutes to paint each one.  

I will be working on the underside of the bird this week.  The challenge is going to come when I get to the smaller feathers of the head and legs.  I will have to do a little more experimenting for those parts.  The head is not the same color as the body.  However, the paint will have to coordinate with what has previously been painted.

Check back next Tuesday to see the next update on this project.