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.
I’ve always been a fan of the Heavy Horse sculpture that stands on the West bound side of the motorway on the way out of Glasgow, it’s particularly impressive when illuminated on a clear night. There are a huge number of fantastic photo’s featuring the sculpture out there on the web although I particularly like this one from David May’s Flickr photostream:
I was certainly aware that Andy Scott has completed a number of other high profile sculptures, but to be honest I hadn’t actually seen other examples of his work until I started writing this article and conducting the obligatory google searches. One of the first sites I came across was Andy’s own website where you can download a number of pictures depicting his work, such as this fine example, ‘Arabesque’:
Andy has completed a number of fine sculptures but just to give you a sense of scale I thought I might share this image that happened across on Zimbio.com
According to Zimbio, this is the worlds largest example of a horse sculpture. It represents one of two heads Andy made, two Kelpies, which were subsequently placed at the entrance to the Forth and Clyde Canal.
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!!
It seems that the higher the temperatures get with the incredible – if not late – onset of spring and summer the lower my enthusiasm for doing crafts becomes. Given the choice of doing ‘work’ in the garden or sitting doing crafts it seems that the garden chores win out every-time … not that there isn’t plenty to be getting on with out there!
I’ve not been completely idle though on the craft front with a couple of developmental pieces underway. This one was just done for fun when I was messing about with some left over mache.
The spider in the foreground here was my first, half-hearted attempt at a spider, partially inspired by some fabric spiders I caught a glimpse of on Ann Wood’s blog that Jolene follows, clearly it bears no real resemblance to that spider – it really just provided the kernel of a notion that later developed (and is developing) into an idea.
Following the creation of this rather cartoon-like spider I went on to work on something a bit more life-like with reference to a variety of spider photo’s and biology models that I found around and about on the internet. The end result was this spider pictured below.
I’m still not entirely satisfied with the spider – although I do like the mandible’s – I think the Abdomen (back bit) is too small in relation to the Cephalothorax (front bit). I may work up another version of this, weather permitting, that’s a bit more anatomically correct – although I don’t think I’ve ever made anything that’s not largely abstract … it might be an interesting challenge.
I’ve nearly finished working on a winged version of my bonnie birds, another development piece, and I’ll share that when it’s finished too.
I’ve put in place a self-imposed ban on making these sprites as they seem to be quickly taking over the house! Until I start making more again I’m just going to drip feed the existing ones to you!
Dan Reeder is a relatively well known papier mache artist and I just thought I’d share this amusing video with you of his presentation at the ignite night in Seattle.
One key point though, papier mache is seriously under-rated, also … I’ve never made a pig :)
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.
I have blogged about these before, so won’t bore you with the details again. I have been trying to get some decent individual shots of them though and having struggled with lighting and props I finally managed to get some pictures for the shop, I’m rather please with them so I thought I might as well share them.
Click to view full sized images, there will be more to follow as I upload them.
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 :)
31 August, 2010 6:44 pm | 
{image source}
{image source}
