It has been a long journey. I started this project in January of this year. I don't keep track of the hours spent because it feel as if it would be discouraging. However, based on the date, I would estimate that all in all it took about ninety hours. I tried to find time to work on it at least two to three hours each week. There may have been a couple of weeks I missed due to travel; and some that I worked more than three hours, so this is my best guess.
Below is a brief synopsis of how the owl was made, but I suggest that you go to my blog and read the individual posts if you plan to attempt this project or to view my other projects. folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com
I started this project with a basic curved template I drew to make a silhouette image of the side of the bird. From there I cut out heavy corrugated cardboard pieces to create the sides, back, breast, and underbelly. The cardboard pieces are held together by tape. I stuffed the inside with paper just to make sure it had enough bulk inside to keep the body from shifting or collapsing under its weight.
Tape was used to cover the entire body as a waterproofing measure. After that, the carcass was covered in a product called Press and Seal to further waterproof the cardboard. (I have had an unfortunate cardboard project fail once when using cardboard, so I tend to go overboard on waterproofing now.) Then another layer of tape for good measure.
After the body was made, I added the head, which was created separately. It took a fair amount of folding and slicing of the cardboard to make the neck fit into the body cavity. The head began as a ball of aluminum foil. There is also some aluminum foil in the beak.
Other than foil, the only other metal in the bird is wire used to shape the legs, feet, and talons. The owl appears to be strutting. I was having trouble getting the owl to balance on its feet. I had not planned on making it strut, that is just how it worked out in the end. Sometimes you have to know when to let the project tell you what it needs.
Each feather was drawn and cut out individually. I used a thinner cardboard for the feathers, but it was to heavy to cut out more than one feather at a time. The weight was about the weight of the type of cardboard that comes sometimes when purchasing shirts or poster board. Each feather was glued to the owl individually. Most of the time I used tweezers to hold onto the feather while I added hot glue to the back and placed it on the bird.
Finally, I arrived at the painting part of the project. Hours and hours of painting. Two coats of gesso were used to give a solid white for painting and priming. Then I had a couple of painting missteps. I started to paint the breast, belly, and tailfeathers first to figure out my painting method during a marathon painting session. Unfortunately, I did not take a step back and look at the work. If I had, I would have realized that it looked too uniform. I started over again and mixed a lot of color that I hoped would give me a medium brown. However, overnight it dried to an almost olive green. So I had to start once again.
At least I learned from my mistakes. This time I mixed on the pallet instead of trying to make a more uniform color. I was using burnt umber, ultramarine blue and white to make a gray for the background. The next step was to try to imitate an owl's coloring by tapping on blotches of paint. Some of the blotches are dark, mixed from burnt umber and ultramarine blue. Other blotches are a lighter color made my mixing white gesso (titanium white looked to chalky.) and raw sienna. Since the colors were not always mixed at the same value, they give an overall impression of light and shadow. After all, the main purpose of the owl's coloring is to give it camouflage.
Why did I start this project? Believe me, it took so long I was
asking this myself quite frequently towards the end of it. Actually, there were multiple reasons. Primarily, I was tired of making paper mâché pumpkins and needed a change. (Check my blog for those posts.)
I used inexpensive home decorating glass pieces rather than the more expensive scrap booking cabochons. They are not quite as regular in shape or size, so some care needs to be taken to make sure that they pieces match. Other than that, they were fine.
Another part is that I wanted to challenge myself with a complicated project. A third aspect is that an owl is a Halloween type project, so I stayed within my comfort zone while trying something completely different. And finally, I look at the wonderful, beautiful, diverse wildlife that inhabits our planet. I try to reproduce what the owl looks like just to give the viewer a moment to ponder just what an amazing creature an owl really is. People are always so busy, that most of the time that they forget to stop and look at the wild life around them. If this sculpture can get them to think about what else is in the world if only for a moment; all this work was worth it.
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