I’ve been wanting to try lino printing for quite some time now but I don’t have the correct tools or the inclination to buy the tools. I do however, have a pack of vinyl floor tiles and a series of gouges that Alasdair uses for his carvings.
Ever the type to make do with what I have, I decided to see if the vinyl tiles could do as good a job as lino. I think the outcome is passable although nowhere near as clear as those I’ve seen from lino…this could also be to do with my lack of ink and brayer and my improvisation of kids paint and a spongy paint roller (also designed for kids).
Not at all bad though. I printed the outline shape and then cut the same piece of vinyl further to create lines, which I then painted black. I love all the extra bits that are created from the carving. Many would remove these ridges but I think they add something of a handmade quality.
I’m thinking of combining this technique with some of my handmade paper and a more elaborate picture for some more luxurious prints.
Over the weekend I was fortunate enough to come across a lengthy piece of blue (what we think is fake) suede in the fabric shop. It was screaming out to me to make some birds…so I did.
It was kind of difficult to sew with. I kept feeling as though the needle hole would tear, but when I came to stuff it turns out that fabric is really hard wearing and the resulting bird has a really nice soft appearance and feel.
I also tried something different with the legs and they have held in position really well, while being a lot easier to get in place. The eye is sewn on this one rather than being a bead…just because I couldn’t be bothered to find my pot of seed beads!
The stitching on these is with darning wool rather than embroidery floss.
And, the underside is the opposite side of the blue suede effect. Still lovely and soft though.
It seems like forever and a day since I originally thought about giving my bonnie birds wings, indeed, it seems like forever and a day since I actually started making this one! Based around the same principles as it’s forebears I had to add some additional armature to build the wings both from a practical point of view but also to ensure that they would be strong enough to stand-up to life’s little knocks. This is the end result
I’m reasonably pleased with the finished product although, contrary to what it looks like, I had an abstraction of a Green Finch in mind when I painted it!
You would think that given, aside from chaffinches, that this is the only bird that visits our garden with any regularity that I’d be able to summon up an image in my minds eye and work it up on one of my bonnie birds; it seems my mind is prone to wandering when I pick up a paintbrush and the notion that I might paint anything in the fashion that I originally intended is completely lost!!
Peacock’s are well known for their fantastic plumage and for proudly strutting their stuff, they’re also an immense source of inspiration for a huge number of people; as you’ll discover if you type ‘peacock art’ into google and look through the image results. It’s easy to see why they should act on the imagination and why artists and crafters alike should wish to include aspects of them in their work, I was reminded of that recently when we visited a local farm park – see here – with the kids and there was a couple strutting back and forth, all the while studiously ignoring each others existence.
Their arrogance and aloofness reminds me of ‘those people’ who have an arrogance born out of forever being told how handsome or beautiful they are, how wonderful they are, how perfect … at least the peacock’s have reason to believe it of themselves. Here are a few pictures I took while we were at the park:
click to full view
I’d love to do a Bonnie Bird drawing inspiration from these birds although I think I need to carefully consider the execution of such an exploit. So, in the mean-time, here are a few samples from around the internet of what others have been up to recently:
Following Jolene’s last post I couldn’t resist the post title, nor – I’m afraid – could I resist including a little musical flashback to my youth … I’ll leave that till the end though!
As Jolene said in her post I have been making more bonnie birds and taking her through the process at the same time, I could be wrong, but I think it falls into the harder than it looks category. Certainly I think it’s taken a bit of practice and development to get them to the stage they’re at now, I only wish I had saved the original prototypes to share with you by way of a comparison with the ones I’m making now … the difference is quite startling!
I’m working on something else now and have saved the prototype of that one so you can see that these things don’t simply materialise without any thought … although that’s often the way these things begin, with a random convergence of whimsical and divergent partial thoughts! Anyway these will be my last Bonnie Birds for a while so that I can concentrate on other things.
Alasdair has been guiding me through the process of making one of his Bonnie Birds…it’s not a process I will be repeating in the near future!
First you have to make the armature, which is quick and easy enough. Then comes the mache, which refuses to stick to the armature. Alasdair’s most helpful advice was to keep squeezing it together until it looked body like…yeah, ok…the more I squeezed, the more determined the stuff was to stick to me and not the armature! Then, and I am not the most patient of people, you have to wait overnight for the body to dry…
…next night you can make the tail in the same way…mache stuck everywhere but where it was supposed to be, and once again we had to leave them overnight to dry. The next night was a repeat performance for the head…I nearly threw it on the fire that night! My beak was huge, then too thin, then it all fell off…argh!
Alasdair assured me that it would all be ok in the end and to just try and get a sort of shape that sort of resembled a bird. I trust him, because he’s my husband, so I persevered, tried my best and created something resembling a bird.
This is Alasdair’s bird after sanding. Mine was too ugly to contemplate at this stage.
The next stage was to sand it all down…I needed to wait for the weekend for this…I won’t bore you with the whys and wherefores. Alasdair insists that sanding is key and other than advising me ‘not to be shy about it’ his other top tip was to mind my fingers!? That exercise went a whole lot better than I imagined it would and I ended up with the shape you see in the finished article. Alasdair was right…all of the mistakes I made earlier were wiped out at this point.
The final stage of painting and varnishing were nerve-racking for me. I’d spent all week making this bird and was about to ruin it all with one wrong brushstroke. Fortunately the Bonnie Bird is a forgiving creature and I was able to rescue it from an overzealous paint job by imagining target practice where the wings should be.
This is me fixing the bits that I missed the first time I varnished it…oops!
As I said, it took me two weeks to make mine from start to finish…Alasdair made five in that same time. See them all in the background laughing at my bird’s short legs and lumpy backside…still I think it’s pretty good for a first (and only) attempt.
A few weeks ago we had a spring clean of our supplies and I came across some really nice pieces of denim fabric that I was going to use for pocket pillow backs (and I still might) but I had an overwhelming urge to make denim fabric finches.
The first was sewn up before I decided they would look cool with embroidery:
So, I embroidered the wings on another one prior to sewing it up:
They naturally fray at the edges, which I quite like.
I’m not sure if this is an abstraction of the commoner garden blackbird or what happens when bonnie birds start listening to goth music!? Whatever it is I’m rather pleased with the colour combo, I may even go so far as to describe it as being a bit chic … but, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what that means!
Anyway, the sun’s been out the last few days and so it would have been churlish to not get out there are get a couple of photo’s outside, just for a wee change from my usual white background.
As ever this is available in our shop, there are also some additional images there too :)
Having made a few batches of previous bonnie birds and developed a decorative pattern that I think works for them – see previous posts here – I’ve been keen to develop alternative patterns, something as it turns out is easier said than done.
Here are a few examples of what I’ve come up with thus far, the first is my favourite of the the three and the last (zig-zag) is based on a design suggested by our wee lad:
Maybe it’s been the first rays of spring-time sun but I was compelled to decorate the latest couple of Bonnie Birds in vibrant yellows and reds.
I decided to stick with the simple design for these birds although I’m mulling over a variety of options for future generations of the Bonnie Birds … actually I’d love to do a tartan one but haven’t been able to find any tartan paint I like yet!
This (below) is only the second bird to have the large peacock-esque tail, again I stuck with a relatively simple design that I think works quite well … although it played havoc with my eyes doing it!
2 September, 2010 2:09 pm | 
by Deadpan Alley
by Jen Skelley
by Verabel
by Sally Boyle
