Last week I blogged about making the legs and claws. This week I am pleased to say that the owl is now standing on its own two feet. Getting the owl's legs attached and the owl balanced was not an easy task. I had to move the legs forward from where I had anticipated they would be placed to make it stand up. All in all it took a little over an hour to get it to stay up. The owl leans a little bit, but in a way it makes it look as if it is strutting rather than being still. Sometimes I just have to work with what is there rather than making it look exactly as I would like.
The "thigh bone" is a little longer than it would be on a real bird. I had to make sure that the wires of the upper legs would have enough length to support the weight of the bird. They were almost too long. I actually tried cutting them back a little bit, but the four doubled wired in each leg proved too difficult to cut. It was easier to use them as they were. Otherwise, I would have had to start over making the legs again. I would have liked the upper legs to be about half an inch shorter, but such is life.
The first leg went on easily enough. I figured out the balance point I was trying to achieve and hot glued the leg into place. You can see a small mark that showed where I originally thought the balance point would be versus where it needed to be. Then I glued in some heavy cardboard supports to keep the leg from slipping. The close up picture of the supports is from the first side.
Close up of mounted leg.
The second leg was where the trouble came in. Just trying to match the first leg's position was not enough. It took a couple of tries to get it in the right place. What looked like the balance point was a little off. I had to remove and re-glue the leg a couple of times to get it to stand up. It made me glad that I had multiple layers of tape on the body. One of the layers pulled off during the removal of the leg from the failed attempts.
The second side is somewhat messier than the first side. It was difficult to try to balance the bird on one leg while using one hand to hold the glue gun and also make sure the second leg was in the right place. It took a lot of glue to get the leg to stay on the bird. However, the messy glue is not something to worry about at this point. There is still plenty left to do before the armature is completed. No one will see the messy glue once it is covered with paper mâché.
In order to get the owl to stand without wobbling, I had to bend the wires of the claws a bit. The rest of the feet will be built up with layers of paper mâché. The important thing to remember when making something using an armature and paper mâché is that it is built up in layers. Where you start is not where it will be when it is finished. It just takes a lot of patience to get to the finish line.
I still have a bit of work to do on the armature. I need to add some padding around the legs. Since there are cardboard supports, I also want to add another layer of Press and Seal and some tape over that area to prevent the cardboard from becoming soggy when I start to add the paper mâché.
Owl strutting.
Other than padding the legs, the armature is pretty much finished. Then the real work begins. I still have to create the eyes and I have to start considering the feathers. I would like to build in some of the shape of the feathers before I start adding the layers of papier mâché. I think that creating some feather definition will make the feathers stand out more when it comes to painting the owl. More on that in a future post.
Check back next week for the next post.
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