New Project: Paper Mâché Owl

 

As I blogged a few days ago, I am returning to blogging after a few years absence.  I have not yet decided what day I will post yet.  I am still trying to find what fits best into my schedule.  I think it will be on Tuesdays, but it is not settled yet.  I hope readers will bear with me while I settle in to a routine.

I work mostly in paper mâché, although I also work in other media.  I have decided that my first project will be an owl.    Why an owl?  Because it is still within my general practice of making Halloween items.  Also, I think I need a break from making pumpkins.  After making several in a row, I want to try something different.

I love owls.  We used to live not far from a reservoir.  A great horned owl lived there.  He would start each morning with a great Hoot! Hoot! Hoot!  Hoot! Hoot! as he flew across the water.  The sound echoed across the water and could be heard for a long way.  As an early riser it was a great beginning to my morning. People who preferred to sleep late probably did not appreciate it as much.

How do I start to make an owl in paper mâché?  Basically, I am starting from something flat and making it into a three-dimensional figure.  My first task is to figure out the shapes.  This is pretty much how people look at shapes for drawing.  Do the parts of the bird resemble circles, ovals, spheres, squares, rectangles, cones, arcs, tear drops and so on.  Of course, the parts will not be an exactly those shapes, but are close enough to allow you to envision how the parts will need to be created.

In this case, the head is somewhat spherical with a cone shape for the beak. The shape of the overall body is similar to a tear drop.  The front of the body is an arc with a relatively flat back.   The wings are tear drop shapes and will cover a good portion of the upper back. You don’t really see much of an owl’s legs most of the time, so I just imagine what a chicken leg looks like.  The thigh is somewhat triangular and the lower part                                                                  of the leg is shaped like an elongated teardrop.

Once the basic shapes have been determined, the next item on the agenda is to determine how large you want the project to be.  Some owls are fairly large.  I was lucky enough to see a Great Horned Owl at a wildlife rescue center.  It was much larger than I had thought it would be.  I am not planning on doing full size.  My studio (also known as the spare bedroom) is overfull of projects.   I decided to make the head first.  The size of the head would determine the size of the body. The head is larger than it appears in the photo.  It is three and a half inches in diameter.

And so, it begins.  I should warn readers at this point that I am making figuring out how to make this as I go along.  I have no instructions.  I am strictly looking at the piece I am working on and say to myself, “How can I make that shape.  In other words, I am winging it.  (Pardon the pun.) I also wanted to let you know that the project is built up in stages.  It is not very owl like at the start.  

I picked up my first piece of newspaper and wadded it into a ball and wrapped it with tape.  I checked the size and continued wrapping more layers of newspaper and tape. Eventually, I had a ball of paper and tape that seemed to be the size that I wanted for this project.

Once the size seemed right, I added a beak.  Basically, the beak was a strip of cardboard to begin with.  I made the beak a little long at first.  It is easier to take some of it off than to start over making a new beak if it is too short.  Once I had the length as I wanted, I started building up the cone shape of the beak.  The beak seems a little large at the moment, but portions of it will be covered later in the project.

Next came the eye sockets.  Owls have very deep-set eyes.  At first, I tried to build up the sockets by using paper and tape, but it was slow going.  After a couple of layers, I decided to switch tactics and use rolled up bits of tin foil held down with tape.  I needed a couple of layers of the tin foil to get the sockets deep enough.  At last!  I have an owl head I can live with. 

This post is getting a little long.  I had hoped to get into how I started on the body today, but I think it is better to wait until next time.  I don’t want to make the post so long that people don’t want to read it.

Check back next week on Tuesday to see how the body will be made.