This week I started working on the figure of the last animal that will go on the carousel. Regular readers may remember that I had at one point said that I was thinking of making this figure a camel. I changed my mind for a couple of reasons. The length of the camel seemed large compared to the other figures. It just looked as if it would be out of scale to the other animals. In the long run, it would also have required me to make a larger base for the carousel in order for it not to look crowded. This carousel is going to be fairly large, and I did not want to make it any larger. Not everyone has room to display a one-eighth scale carousel.
So rather than expand the size of the carousel, I decided to make the last animal a rabbit. I have plenty of cotton left from making the coats of the cat and tiger. Having another animal with a fur coat seemed like a good way to use some of that cotton.
The photo on the right shows my drawing of the rabbit. It is a little hard to read, but the drawing on the left is the far side of the animal. The photo on the right is the Romance side of the animal. Carousel makers call the side that faces the public the Romance side because this is the side that has most of the decorations on it. Carousel makers generally do not put as much work on the decorations on the inside because it is not seen from outside of the carousel and because it takes so long to make an animal.
The front ear is pointed up, and the far side ear is pointed forward. That creates an opportunity for the public to see the other ear. If the ears were in line, it might have looked as if the animal had only one ear.
The tail is not shown in the plan. It will be a little round cotton tail. There was not point of putting it on the drawing because it does not sit on the edge of a side but in the middle. If I had cut out the tail on the drawing, I would have had a tail on each side. Not the look I was going for.
The drawing was transferred onto blue card stock. Regular readers know, but new readers may not know why I used blue cardstock. The main reason is that I have a large quantity of blue card stock. Someone had gifted me a mostly full ream of this stuff. I did not know what I would do with it at the time, but I knew I could find something to do with it. Other than that, the contrast of the blue on the white background of the plastic covering my work area works well for photographs.
I am a big fan of using what I have on hand. I try to use up odds and ends of things before I go out to purchase something.
Once I transfer the rabbit figures onto the card stock, I cut the figures out with a sharp craft knife. I saved the cutouts of all the animals. I am not sure exactly what I plan to do with them, but I did not want to toss them out. They could be used as a stencil in another project. Or just used for someone to trace around to have their own rabbit to use in a drawing. I am thinking of children coming to visit that I might need a quick craft for their amusement.
Sometimes I do crafts with programs for seniors or the disabled, and I think they might enjoy coloring or painting them it as much as the children.
This is as far as I have started on this project. I hope to have the animal together by next week's blog post which will show the process of turning a two-dimensional object into a three-dimensional object. Regular readers know why there are four animals. New readers will be able to see the full process of building an animal in the next post.
Check back next Monday or Tuesday for the next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment