Hitchcock’s, The Birds, was one of my favourite films as I grew up, the eerie notion that birds of all shapes and sizes should be overcome with an insatiable lust for human flesh, attacking young and old alike without provocation and otherwise simply sitting and waiting on some playground climbing frame for their next unsuspecting victim …
… actually, no, it’s nothing like that around here … although we do seem to have an increasing number of slightly suspicious looking birds sitting in the windowsill! And so it was that I finished my latest papier mache birds. My latest obsession.
In terms of scale the one in the middle is a tad over 6″ tall at it’s tallest point. I decided to render these ones in shades of green with the now familiar pattern of white dots, I’ve got a couple more under-way as I type this, although I imagine it’ll be a good few days before I finish them – other commitments such as life tends to throw at you … like blocked drains … ugh!
As ever, these are available to buy from our shop.
It’s funny how an idea can sprout wings and take-off (dreadful pun entirely intended), such as it has been with these bonnie birds. It’s rather refreshing to have something I can make out of papier mache that doesn’t take forever and a day and that isn’t a bowl! Aside from this pair I’m hatching three more and they should be fully fledged in the next few days (and yes, that was a couple more of dreadful puns that were entirely intended).
This pair seem to be diametrically opposed in terms of form, one’s short and fat and the other a bit leggy with a great fan of a tail, the tail’s something I can see me repeating and refining on future versions.
Of course, like all birds that flock, it doesn’t take long for them to catch-up with more of their own kind …
… I imagine this flock will be growing as they, ahem, get to know each other better … well, it is almost Spring!!
I’ve been watching Jolene create her fabric finches for months now, I suppose it was inevitable that I would end up taking some inspiration from them and feeding it into what I’m doing myself … indeed, Jolene alluded to as much here. The WIP previews she gave there though have long since been finished, and discarded on the basis that they were, well, rubbish!
I’m rather proud of the these ones though, the refined and finished product if you will. Being me, they’re predominantly papier mache with a bit of wire and armature thrown in for good measure before being finished in acrylics and a tough high gloss varnish.
The design is based on some rather fabulous silk that Jolene bought from a seller in India for another project that she’s working on, also from discussions with Jolene about Paisley pattern – a very simplified tear drop has been adopted for the wings here – and I’ve also been listening to some Deva Premal which has no doubt fed in to the general feel of the pieces … although I’ve no idea where she’s from!?!
OK, google sorted out the latter one there … she’s from Germany and wiki says:
is a musician known for her meditative spiritual New Age music, which puts ancient Hindu mantras into atmospheric, contemporary settings.
Am I becoming an old hippy? Actually never-mind, people were accusing me of being an old hippy before I was even 20 … actually I think the term they used was “weirdo”!!
These Bonnie Birds are available to purchase in out Coriandr shop.
I had promised to have this finished by April 2009, so obviously I’m delighted to have finished it before it goes a full year past my own self-imposed ‘due date’!
Like most of his erstwhile and largely forgotten friends Gruber is keen on world domination, although it’s perhaps telling that he and his cohorts are largely forgotten given their compete ineptitude when it comes to matters of actually achieving world domination. Indeed his most well known cousin, Gravalash, was defeated by his inability to get off a high shelf and whilst such trifling difficulties are unlikely to be of much difficulty to this fellow the complexities of reaching the door handle have limited the range of Gruber and the fulfilment of his innocuous plans.
He dreams of breaking loose and running free as he once did, although he is still haunted by the nightmare of attempting to cross a field of snow that proved to be too cold for his tippy-toes, alas what else is left for him other than to stand at the window and wave at the post lady …
Gruber stands at 18.5″ / 47cm tall, is 16.25″ / 41cm from the tip of one horn to the tip of the other, and is approx 11″ / 28cm deep.
He is available for sale, to a good (and secure) home in our Coriandr shop, here – additional images are also there.
The process has been somewhat arduous and there have been many poor deformed creatures along the way. It’s taken me such a long time of thinking before I finally plucked up the courage to create a new design. It seems so silly now but I was so pleased with the original bird design (for the fabric finches) that I was scared I wouldn’t be able to produce anything even approaching the quality and that would be a waste of my limited time and materials.
I finally arrived at a flying bird that I am reasonably happy with. It’s supposed to be a goose but the kids think it looks like a seagull. I’m pleased that it even looks like a bird at all!
I’m thinking about making a mobile with a whole flock of them. I think that would be cool. I say thinking but there’s always a huge gap between thinking and doing so please don’t hold your breath.
Meanwhile, Alasdair has been busy and has been making some very funky paper and wire birds; more on those when they’re finished but in the meantime a picture of them drying following the first coat of paper.
It’s been commented on in the past that there are strange things going on in the dark recesses of my mind, that they seem to bleed out into the light through what I create … I think ‘they’ may have a point.
I seem to have a raft of canvasses lying around and despite repeated attempts to paint something of any worth on them I seem to fail and fail again. The canvas here has been used so many times now that I can’t recall how many images lie beneath this final effort, perhaps it’s a furious amalgam of all that went before, a seething anger at the ineptitude slapped on the canvas below.
Whatever it is, using a canvas as a base for some wall art/sculpture is an avenue of interest to me and something I feel sure I will pursue further at some future point. In the meantime I can think of at least two (more conventional) sculptures that deserve to be finished after well over a years worth of idling!
I was messing around at the weekend and decided to try out something new with the bird pattern. It’s the same pattern but made with printed cotton rather than felt. I quite like the finish.
This is very much a prototype. I’m working on a series of love birds for wedding cake toppers and this little lady was born out of an idea of using wedding march music on some part of it. I’m waiting for some satin and lace, hence why she’s entirely made out of cotton. I like it though and think with a few tweaks she could become a new offering in the shop. In the meantime I finally get to have a fabric finch of my very own. Some might say I deliberately made this one less than perfect just so I could keep it and maybe they’d be right!
I also decided to make her a little papier mache house to keep her warm and dry on these cold winter nights. That didn’t go so well but I think the idea is sound so I will persevere. Perhaps I’ll enlist Alasdair’s help to make a little wooden hut.
It’s always a bit of struggle for me to get back into the swing of the craft thing following the festive frivolities, of course it hasn’t helped that we were on emergency fuel rations until our delivery arrived Wednesday and I had to spend the next three days shifting it up the hill to the house … that’s another story though!
Currently I’m working on this piece of wall art that I last picked up during late November or December and following the break I’ve lacked any kind of motivation to pick it up again. Losing momentum can be a real struggle at times and until you can gather yourself to move on projects can idle and die, this can be a real issue with materials like papier mache which require long drying periods in between adding layers or building up texture or depth.
The concept isn’t exactly a new one but it’s one I’ve been keen to experiment with and following my fourth sub-standard painting on this canvas I decided it was time to use it for something other than painting … I suppose you might suggest that the previous efforts have been consumed by the character emerging from the canvas now. He certainly looks like he might have a touch of indigestion!
Regular readers may well recall these bowls in their original form, you can see them here. As then they were blue, and they are finished with varnish. What is different is the depth of the ’sub-coat’ I apply to these pieces, the method in which the paint was applied and finally the varnish used is a much tougher and much higher gloss variety.
In all honesty I was never satisfied with the bowls, despite the compliments (thanks!), and when I brought them out at one of our recent craft fayres I was compelled to immediately re-wrap them and return them to the crate from whence they came!
With everything that’s been going on of late I struggled to get them finished, but the final coat of varnish is dry and we even managed a wee drop of winter sunshine to get some piccies taken … sunshine makes me happy! Anyway, here are the bowls:
I first became aware of Helen’s work a few years ago when I began dabbling with papier mache and was just beginning to see the possibilities it offered beyond what we traditionally think of when we hear about this much under-rated material. I had tried my hand at making a mask with mache and Helen (a mask maker) happened to comment, something that led me to view her DeviantArt gallery.
Helen seems to have become a mask maker of some repute, something that is certainly confirmed from what she has featured online, these masks are created most usually from papier mache or leather. In honesty it’s the papier mache work that interests me most given my own experiments with that particular medium, and her talent here can be seen in these two designs:
Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh.
Gilded Pleasure
On the latter mask, above, Helen says this:
I’m not sure what it says about my maskwork, but whenever I try to create something pretty, it usually ends up looking sinister.
Something which I admit made me laugh! Indeed not all of Helen’s masks are sinister, or even black for that matter. From what I’ve seen though it’s when Helen is working with leather that a form of organic beauty comes to the fore and it’s in working with leather where her skill for mask making is most apparent.
Social Butterfly
If this, and it’s counterparts, don’t fall into the ‘pretty’ camp then I don’t know what does. Helen herself sees much more of the gothic in these than I believe there is, yet as she created them I guess we should cow down to her opinion on the matter, either way these are fab … to see more like these follow the links at the end of the article.
Steampunk inspired mask
Steampunk is something of an artistic movement that has gathered pace in recent years and has now pervaded almost every genre you might think of from it’s early literary origins and it’s something I’m a bit of a fan of myself, perhaps that’s why I’m a fan of this piece. Yet it’s the little details that really set this mask apart with the attention to detail around the edges and the textured finish given to the mask. Subtle, but it works so well.
I’m not quite sure if this counts as a royal endorsement but Prince Charles, below, certainly seemed to take a shine to her popular ‘welsh dragon’ mask!
Come on Charlie, put it on ... you know you want to!
Not content with mixing with the royals Helen has also been commissioned to do make masks for the theatre and this music video for Ebony Tower and their White Rabbit track:
Something a bit different, but check out that mask!
Whether you’re a fan of masks or just seeing great pieces of work created by a true artisan then I strongly suggest you visit either Helen’s deviantart account, or better yet, check out her website (where you can also make purchases if you’r eso inclined).
13 March, 2010 7:00 am | 
