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."  

Paper Mâché Owl - Part 13 Fixing the Beak

I have finished adding the cardboard "feathers" to the owl, and it was time to do fix the beak.  If you have been following along, you might have noticed that the beak was not particularly owl-like.  I left fixing the shape of the beak until the end for two reasons.  First, I was not exactly sure how much of the beak could be fixed by adding feathers to it to slim it down some.  The other reason is that once the shape was fixed it might get knocked around as I was turning the bird this way and that while working on it, causing it to lose its shape.  To fix the beak, it took some surgery; some of the beak had to go.

The owl's new beak.

An owl's beak is rather narrow and has a long hooked point.  To get rid of the excess width, I used a craft knife and cut down along both sides of the beak and removed some of the cardboard and tape.  Then I added some hot glue to stabilize the area and prevent future moisture invasion from the coming layers of paper mâché.  

After the beak was narrowed, I added some folded up layers of aluminum foil to develop the hooked shape.  This was attached with hot glue.  More foil was added over the upper part of the beak to make it look even with the hooked shape.  This was also attached with hot glue.  Then, The entire area was taped with masking tape.  A craft knife was used to trim away overlapping edges of tape.  Lastly, a layer of feathers was glued over the edges of the beak.

Front view of new beak.

The last part of creating the beak will be covering the area with layers of paper mâché over it to make it solid so it will not bend.  I have not gotten to that yet, but my next plan is to cover both the beak and talons with paper mache.

My next blog post will be show that and also talk about some changes coming to the owl.  Check back next Tuesday.

Paper Mâchê Owl Part 12 - Finishing up the Eyelids and Feathers

I have made a fair amount of progress this week.  I wish I had been able to complete this phase of the project.  I have about an hour's worth of work to finish adding the cardboard feathers to the back of the head.  Once that is completed, I will be ready to add some more layers of waterproofing before adding the  paper mâchê paste.  This is waterproofing to prevent the paper mâchê paste from soaking the cardboard and causing it to lose its shape and holding power.  A later blog post will address how to waterproof the paper mâchê layers.  That is a different method from the one used at this point in the project.  Check back on this blog in a week or so for that information.

I also added the eyelids, which give the eyes a more realistic look.  The first picture shows the eye without the eyelid.  The second picture shows the eye lid added. 

 

Owl without an eyelid.  

It was not very had to make the eyelids.  I cut out a circle from very flexible cardboard.  Then I cut the circle in half.  After checking to find the best position, I glued on the eyes with hot glue.  Since I was not using completely round cabochons for the eyes, I just had to pick what looked best.  The glue was giving me a little grief.  At first the eyelid wanted to slip while being held while waiting for the glue to dry.  I had to do some scraping to get excess glue off the areas where it slipped.  I will probably do some more scraping at the end of this project.  

I needed to do a little surgery on the lid.  It actually covered more of the eye than I wanted.  It was probably alright as it was, Owls blink.  However, I preferred a more open eye, so I used a sharp craft knife to cut back some of the lid.  I think it looks better for it.

Owl with eyelid added.

After adding the eyelids, I started working on the feathers around the face.  The face and head feathers are really quite small compared to other parts of the bird.  The initial size of the feathers are 3/8 of an inch (9.53 mm) by 1/2 inch (12.7 mm).  (Note: I checked these figures on a conversion table.) They were small enough that it was no longer feasible to wear my silicone finger protectors while using hot glue.  They just made my fingers to clumsy to hold the small pieces.  Rather than burn the dickens out of my fingers, I held the bottom of each feather with some sharply pointed tweezers.  This helped a great deal, but it was more difficult to place the pieces.  I had to hold the tweezers, add the glue, flip the tweezers over and place the feather in the correct spot.  There is a lot more glue showing on the head feathers compared to other areas of the bird.  No matter, I will pull off as much as I can before starting the next phase of the Owl.  No one will see it in the finished project.

I tried to lay the feathers in a pattern that resembles the way the bird will look once it is painted.  The texture and directionality will give the bird a more realistic look than if it is just flat.  Each layer adds shape to the Owl.  It will also give me some visual cues when I start to paint the bird.

I also worked on the ears.  The ears were covered with very tiny pieces of cardboard.  The little pieces I used were scraps left from cutting out the small cardboard feathers for the head.  I added a little bead of glue along the front edge as there was not any cardboard covering that tiny area.

Next week will be the big reveal of the end of this phase.  Check back next Tuesday.

Paper Mâché Owl Part 11 Painting and Adding the Eyes

This week I worked on painting and adding the eyes to my owl.  I needed a break from adding the cardboard feathers.  It can get a little tedious to work hour after hour on essentially the same thing.

The eyes are glass painted with acrylic paints.  I used some glass decorative glass pieces to paint the eyes.  The pieces of glass I used were some rounded pieces that are for decorative purposes.  They are not exactly round.  Fully round glass cabochons (found in the scrapbooking section) are expensive relative to bag of inexpensive decorator cabochons that are available for a dollar or less.  I buy a small bag and hunt for the most regular looking ones I can find that are the same size.  I can usually find two or three pairs of cabochons that will work well for a project.  

There are a few different ways to paint glass eyes. Many of them use enamel paints or fingernail polish.  The enamels look really nice, but I try not to add expensive elements to my projects if I have something at home that will work.  Nail polish can run from about a dollar to about eight or nine dollars a bottle or even higher.  I opted for acrylic paints that I already had at home.

 I first tried painting glass eyes on my last paper mâché pumpkin project.  I found various methods for painting the eyes.  By doing reverse paintings on the back side of the cabochon, it really looks like an eye.  That is, if you can get it to look right.  Some methods require multiple layers and scrapings to make the eye look as if it has depth and dimension.  After trying a few approaches on the pumpkin eyes, I finally settled on a method for painting eyes with acrylics.  I want to give a shout out to the guy who put up a YouTube video on the method.  A link to his video is provided here for anyone who wants to learn more about it:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkYtDUIa3BQ

When I make eyes for a project, I usually make at least three pair.  Then I pick the best set out of the three.  After a few tries at painting completely round pupils, I found that the method described in the video above worked the best.  The method for the pupil part is quite simple.  Basically, it is just putting a dot of paint in the center of the back of the cabochon and lightly pressing on another cabochon to spread the paint in a circle.  

If I had wanted to add a highlight to the eye, I would have added a dot of white paint at about the 1:00 o'clock position.  It would have had to been put in place before the pupil was added because this is reverse painting.  The last thing you would normally paint on a flat surface has to go first.  However, I did not put one in because the rounded glass surface of the front of the eye reflects light and creates its own highlights.  I think it would take someone with more experience than I have to get the white dot in the right position and then add the pupil.

For me, it was not quite so simple to determine the center of my irregularly shaped cabochons.  The first few eyes seemed a little off center.  I finally drew an X on a piece of paper, and place what appeared to be the center of the cabochon (rounded side down) on the X.  This at least gave me a target to aim for with the drop of paint.  Once the paint was on the first cabochon, I pressed the other cabochon onto it.  It still took me five tries to get it right. I actually had it right the first time, then dropped the cabochon and ended up getting paint all over my myself and the plastic I had down to protect the table.  It was a mess, but persistence paid off and I had two usable eyes.  So be forewarned, wear clothes that you don't mind getting pain on and protect your work surface if you try to do this.

The cabochons were set aside for the black paint of the pupils to dry.  After that, the outer edge of the cabochon was painted with a non-metallic antique gold acrylic paint.  They were set aside to dry again. 

Once the eyes were dry, a varnish was added to the back to protect the paint.  This was allowed to dry completely.  

Because of the irregular shape, the pupils are not exactly centered.  That still works for this project.  The upper edge of the eyeball still needs to be covered by the eye lid.  The eyelid will also cover part of the pupil.  The lower edge, which has more area of gold paint will be the most visible.  I did not do any scraping on the gold part of the iris.  

After painting, the eyes were glued onto the owl with hot glue.  More of the cardboard feathers and layers of paper mâché which have yet to be added will add more holding power to keep the eyes in place.  

For people who do not think they are ready to paint glass eyes, there are a few other alternatives.  At doll supply websites on the internet, you can purchase paper eyes that can be glued to the back of the cabochons.  Be sure to research your glue for that will dry completely clear and not yellow. 

It is also possible to buy plastic eyes for stuffed animals that look very realistic.  These eyes may come with a shank, that would need to be cut off or a hole punched in the head of the owl to accommodate it.  I actually had some of these eyes on hand, but my project was too large to use these eyes.  I may have to do some ravens or something at some point to try to use them up.  

A third, and the most expensive option would be to purchase glass eyes from a taxidermy supply company.  They are going to look the most realistic of all the options.  It would also be expensive compared to any of the other options.  

I have still been adding the feathers to the body this week.  I also added the ears.  I had not added them before because at some points I had to have the bird lying upside down and I did not want to damage them.  I am hoping to have the feather portion of the project finished by the next blog post.  

Check back on Tuesday.

Paper Mâché Owl Part 10 - More Feathers to Give Owl Some Shape

I have made quite a bit of progress on my owl this week.  I have been adding more cardboard "feathers" to give the bird a more birdlike shape.  The feathers are cut from thin cardboard that had enough flex in them to be able to be glued down to the armature.  A heavier cardboard could have been used, but it would not have been as easy to cut or to bend.  I was fortunate enough to have received a lot of thin cardboard recently.  You know when the universe is behind your project when exactly what you need comes your way at just the right moment!  

Front view of the owl.

The feathers are in different shapes and sizes, so I was only cutting a few at a time until I had a good idea of how many feathers of a certain shape I was going to need.  Each of the feathers were hand cut with scissors.  I am sure that there is some type of die cut machine that could have done this, but I prefer to be hands on for every part of my project.  

The feathers also cover up a lot of the dents and divots in the armature.  The form has to be built up in stages.  The first stage of a project looks so unlike the envisioned project that it takes a lot of will power not to toss the whole thing into the trash.  I have to make each layer look a little more like the shape that I want.  Today's bird looks better than last weeks layer.  

Rows of feathers waiting to be cut.

The feathers were a little less pointed once they were cut.  It was easier to cut them out by moving the cardboard around the scissors and cut in a continuous line along each horizontal row.  You can see two of the feathers cut out above the piece of cardboard.

The feet will not be worked on until the entire bird is covered.  At the moment it is a little tail heavy and tends to rock back onto its tail.  I expect the weight to shift once the glass eyes are added and the head is covered with feathers.  I may need to adjust the wire feet once everything else is finished.

Side views of the owl. 

The wings are not quite finished yet.  I still have to put on the cap of the shoulders.  Once the last of the shoulder feathers are on I will pause work on the feathers and paint the glass eyes.  They will need to be in place before the last of the feathers are added.  

Check back next week on Tuesday for the next installment.