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.  

Paper Mâché Owl - Part 16 - Priming for Painting

One more step on the owl is complete.  I made some test pieces to make sure the cardboard was not going to come apart when painted.  It held up well, so it was on to giving the owl a primer coat.  I actually did two coats of gesso to prime it for painting.  It takes two coats to cover over the newsprint on the paper  mâché on the beak and feet.  That way no words or pictures are showing through.  Some acrylic paints are transparent so the coverage really needs to block out everything.   Also, I made sure that the cardboard was well coated along the edges of the feathers so they would not curl.  

Priming the owl was a two day project.  I was laying the bird on its side and back in order to paint from all angles.  I used a medium weight gesso.  All of the brush strokes were made from the top of each feather to the bottom.  I am hoping that the heavier gesso will hold some of the brush marks, which will give each feather from texture.  Now I am giving it a couple of days to make sure that all of that is completely dry, then the painting will begin.  I am really hoping that I can make some reasonable facsimile of what owl feathers look like.  

I plan to experiment with colors and painting techniques before I begin to paint on the owl.  If I can figure out a combination of strokes that can blend the paint before I start; I will have a better idea of how the owl should look.  

I will not have a post on Tuesday, May 28th.  The weekend before this is Memorial Day.  I have to get ready for the holiday festivities on the days leading up to the holiday, so I doubt that I am going to have very much time to work on the project this week.  I really hate to work on painting it when I am feeling rushed.  Look for the next blog post on June 4th, 2024.  

 

Paper Mâché Owl- Part 15 -Quick Post

I have just a quick post and no new pictures this week.  The photo below is the same as last weeks picture.  I have been out of town, and had very little time to work on the project.  The best that I could do was to finish the layers of paper mâché on the beak and feet.  I will be starting the painting this afternoon.  

After two coats of gesso, I will begin painting.  I am both excited and stressed about this part of the project.  I am hoping that I will make a good job of painting the owl.  I have put so much work into the project that I start to stress over perhaps messing it up at this stage.  

I have looked at a number of owl pictures for great horned owls and long eared owls.  I really had no idea how individual the plumage on owls actually are.  In some ways that is a relief.  There is so much diversity in the plumage that I can't feel that I am "doing it wrong".  Of course there are many similarities around the face of an owl, but I can readily say that you could tell individual owls from their markings.

Anyway, that is about as far as I have taken the project.  Next week there will be time for me to work on it.  Check back next Tuesday to see the latest on this project.

Paper Mâché Owl Part 15 - Finally Starting the Paper Mâché

It has been another busy week, but at least it has been busy in an enjoyable way rather than a good way rather than a stressful way.  However, that has left me a little behind in working on my project.  At least there has been a little progress.  I have started to put paper mâché on the beak and feet.

I have two layers of the paper mâché added onto the beak.  I used a sharp pick shaped like a dental tool to push the first layer under the feathers of the beak.  The second layer was pasted onto the feathers in order to give the layer a better hold on the cardboard. 

So far, I only have one layer on the feet.  The feet were more difficult than the beak.  I was trying to paste paper on the feet while keeping the rest of the bird free from the paste.  Both the owl and I were standing on our heads at some points while trying to keep clean.  The feet look bigger even with just one layer of paper mâché on them.   

At least I made some progress on the project.  I don't know if I will have much time to work on the owl this week.  Spring has brought on a slew of new activities.  Trying to keep up with it all has left me feeling like I have been shot out of a cannon; rushing headlong from one event to the next.  I expect to finish up the paper mâché  within a week.  Then it will be onto painting the figure.

In case you missed the previous blog post, I switched my plan from covering the whole owl in paper mâché and am planning on painting the rest of the owl.  Many of my family and friends who have watched my progress think that I should only use paper  mâché  on the beak and feet rather than the whole owl.  I am not so sure that is going to work, but I thought I would give it a try.  If things do not go well, I can still go back to the original plan of covering the entire owl in paper mâché.  If worst comes to worst, and the cardboard starts to curl, I can tear off everything back to where I waterproofed the carcass and begin again from there.  I really doubt it will come to that.  When making an experimental project, it is good to have a Plan B and even a Plan C though.

Check back next Tuesday for the next post on this project. 

Paper Mâché Owl - Part 14 Building up the Feet

Unfortunately, I have had very little time to work on my owl project this week.  I only managed to add some talons to the feet.  Owls do not tippy toe around like Sandpipers.  They have large rough feet with sharp claws built for grabbing and holding their prey.  I needed the toes to be larger and add the claws.

I had already given the toes a little bit of bulk by dripping some hot glue along the top.  That helped give the toes a rougher look.  That only worked a little bit.  By the time I was ready to work on the feet, some of that had peeled up.  I ended up pulling some of it off.

To create the claws, I cut small crescents out of cardboard.  I needed two for each claw I was trying to create.  Owls have three toes in front and one in the back, so I needed a total of sixteen crescents for this project.  I taped the front of the downward facing crescents together, then opened up the back of each crescent to form a wedge.  This wedge was then hot glued to the existing toe and then covered with tape.  I lost a bit of the crescent shape when I added the tape.  The main idea at this point is just to make the toes look like sharp talons.  More detail will be added with paint.

I also bulked up the legs by wrapping them in some aluminum foil and tape.  I may yet add more to the foot.  Sometimes I have to walk away from the project and come back to it before I make a decision on adding more.  Adding too much is as bad as not adding enough.  

Extending the toes had an added bonus.  It gave the owl a little more stability.  The owl does not rock back on its tail as much as it had before.  I may need to make one correction on one of the toes, as it does not sit quite touch the ground.  This is an easy fix.  I'll just add a little more tape to the area.

Last blog post I had mentioned that there was a change in direction in the project.  I wanted to give readers a heads up.  My original intention for this project was to cover the entire owl in paper mâché and then paint it.  And herein lies a cautionary tale as to why showing your work before it is complete can be problematic at times.  

The cardboard "feathers" of the owl really give the bird its shape.  All of the people I have shown it to have said I should not cover up the feathers.  They think I should just paint it.  In any case, I will still need to put paper mâché on the beak and feet. I admit, by the time I had come this far with the project and saw how nice the owl looked, I wished I had done it in balsa wood rather than cardboard. I am torn between sticking to my original plan or switching horses in mid-stream and going a different route.  Am I prepared to potentially wreck a project?

I was not sure how the cardboard is going to react to being painted.  It could curl up or separate into its many layers if it gets too wet.  It might be fine.  I'll never know unless I try it.  I have some options here.  If the paint works as hoped, the project is close to complete.  If the cardboard curls, I may still be able to cover it with paper mâché. In any case, I will still need to put paper mâché on the beak and feet at a minimum as they are only covered with masking tape at this point.

My last resort scenario if the cardboard fails beyond use, I could strip the project back to the layer where it was waterproofed with a layer of Press and Seal and start over from there.  It would not be a complete rebuild.  If I end up doing that, it might be worthwhile to pursue the balsa wood angle.  However, I don't think it will come to that.  I have done a few test pieces of cardboard to see how it responds to the primer.  It has done just fine.  I think it is going to be okay to paint.

So, I plan to go ahead and just use paint.  It may be for the best as the feathers give it a lot of texture.  But, for all of that, if I had waited and showed off a finished paper mâché  project, they would still have looked at it for twenty seconds and said, "Wow, that looks cool."