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.
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.
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.
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