Mousie Mouse Bits

I started this mouse a while ago, and now I'm waiting on some fabric that I ordered for my Goth chicken, so I'm going to work on the mouse during the chicken hiatus.

Today I painted the head, hands, and feet.  It's so true that things happen in their own time.  I made these stoneware pieces back in June while I was at the NIADA conference.  I finally fired them a few weeks ago.  And during that whole time, there was a fretting spot in the back of my mind concerned with how I would add color to them.

I thought of acrylic, or oils, or pastel dust followed by fixative and none of them seemed quite right.  But today I just plunged in - finally!  I got out the wool that I will use for felting the body, because I have to match the head, hands, and feet colors to the wool.  And I decided to take the path of least resistance, which I considered to be the acrylic paints.

I worked mainly with a small beat-up round bristle brush and a dabbing motion.  Except I used a nice synthetic round for the eyes, a synthetic flat for the nose which I shaded darker at the bottom, and a liner for the mouth.  It worked fairly well.  The stoneware is very textured, and the color looks nice and soft.

Because I knew the eyes wouldn't be really shiny, I added painted highlights.  For a sealer, I used brush-on acrylic varnish - gloss for the eyes and satin elsewhere. 

Time for Goth

Here's the Goth hen, all painted and ready for costuming.  The white patch on the upper wing is simply an unpainted area that I left that way because I absolutely know it will be completely covered with fabric.

The black and white on her face is typical Goth make-up - very light skin with large, dark eyes and black lips and  "hair."  I've left a bit of the red of the wattle showing to suggest that the black is Gothmake-up.  I may decide later to widen the black "lipstick" so that it looks less like just the shadow of the recess where the upper and lower beaks meet.

I had a severe engineering issue with this hen.  The legs weren't strong enough.  While I was painting her I inadvertently rested her on her toes and I guess I must have put some pressure on because her left leg broke a little above the ankle.  I had to pull it apart and remove the useless wooden skewer to make room for plenty of two part epoxy glue to fill the cavity and hopefully hold the leg together.  I'll put shoes on her with soles cut from 1/4" birch plywood.  With the toes all glued to the wooden soles, hopefully the two legs and feet will form one rigid piece which will hold up better.  But it's just another reminder of how important strength and engineering are in constructing these figures. 

Where's the Mohawk?

I forgot to take a photo of this chicken when she was painted but before she was clothed.  I painted all of her - except for the upper wings - because even though I knew she would be largely covered with clothing I didn't know exactly where the borders would be.  So it was a bit tedious, but I really didn't mind.  Painting is nearly always fun!

The Punk Chicken is now nearly finished.  She has her clothes, combat boots, spiked collar and most of her piercings.  But where's the Mohawk?

But before I address that serious question, a bit about the clothing construction.  I'm soooooo glad I made the wings separately - it made the whole clothing process much easier.

Anyway, I began with the skirt.  I gathered lengths of tulle onto a ribbon waistband.  There are four tulle layers and I gathered each of them separately so the skirt would be fluffier.  To attach it, I simply glued the ribbon waistband to her body with Alene's Fast Grab glue, one of my four favorite glues (the others being E6000, WeldBond, and 5-minute cure two part epoxy).  The tulle was the same length all the way around, so I got out my sharp fabric scissors and trimmed it to be shorter in the front.  I also used the scissors to chop and rough up the hemline.  The waistband needed a more finished look, so I hand stitched a bias cut piece of fabric, folded back on each long edge, over the ribbon with the seam under where one of the wings would be.

 

The t-shirt was next.  I used a piece of sleeve from one of my old t-shirts for the fabric, utilizing the sleeve hem for the hem at the bottom edge of the shirt.  I knew the shirt would be covered with the jacket, so all I needed was a piece for the front.  I hemmed the top edge for the neckline, then distressed the fabric with scrapes, holes, and cuts then painted "DESTROY" across the chest with Jacquard fabric paint.  For finishing touches I glued flat-back Swarovski crystals in a line under the lettering then added grunge with brown fabric paint, a make-up sponge, and a light rubbing motion.  I just glued the t-shirt piece in place with dots of Alene's Fast Grab glue at the corners.

 

For the jacket, I used pieces cut from an old pair of denim shorts.  It's mostly made from pieces from pockets, using the original hemmed edges from the shorts.  But the collar is made from a piece of the waistband.  The buttons are rivets I carefully cut from the shorts and painstakingly pulled all the fabric out of.  It's hard to describe how I made the jacket except to say that the back is one piece and each front is a separate piece.  They're sewn together at the shoulders, but the sides are open with the raw edges under the wings.  Once I sewed the collar on the jacket, I glued it in place under where the wings would be.  The wings are just wrapped with the fabric glued in place on the back sides.  The wires on the backs of the wings fit into holes on the body, and I glued the wings on with E6000 glue.

 

 

 





 

 Nice tail piercing, don't you think?

 

As for the mohawk, I'm still trying to figure out how to make it.  I almost wish I had sculpted the comb more extremely.  Then I could have painted it pink and it would be the Mohawk.  I considered sawing off the current comb and re-doing it, but decided that would be too risky.  So I've ordered some pink doll hair and I'll see if I can make a Mohawk out of that.



Paper Clay Hens

The paper clay portions are now done.  I've made the wings separate so I can dress my birds more easily.  The wings are on the left chicken temporarily, just for the photo.

Here's how I made the wings.  I cut the main shapes from cardboard and covered the right side with paper clay.  I made a wire spiral with one end of the wire protruding about 1" perpendicular to the center of the spiral.  I secured the spiral in place on the back of the wing under a blob of paper clay with the end of the wire sticking out from the clay (- this wire end will fit into a hole in the body, securing the wings in place).  When that dried, I covered the rest of the back with paper clay.  I then cut out individual cardboard feathers for the lowest row, covered them with paper clay, and stuck them in place on the underside of the wing tips.  I drilled holes in the sides of the bodies to accommodate the wires sticking out the backs of the wings.

It was only after I had a complete layer of paper clay on the first bird that I realized the legs were not in the right places for balancing.  So I had to saw through the paper clay and skewers at the base of the legs to remove them.  When the rest of the clay work was done I could determine where they properly belonged.  At this point I no longer had skewer ends to stick into the bodies, so I had to settle for attaching the legs with paper clay.  But there was still plenty of that to add to form the bulges at the tops of the legs, so they should be sufficiently securely attached.

I didn't continue working on the third chicken that you saw in yesterday's post - the one that was bending its head down.  When I began making these birds I was going to put them in a local show and sale in October.  But not far into the project I realized that there would be so much work in them that they would be over-priced for the event.  So I turned to an idea I've had for a month or so - Punk meets Goth.  The hen on the left will become my Goth hen, and the one of the right will be my Punk hen.  Making the costumes will really be fun - and quite a challenge.

But first, the painting!

Chicken Mummies

 

I'm starting a new project - chicken dolls from paper clay.  They will have fabric clothes.  I'm planning a group of three, and here's the first step.  I've cut the basic shapes from Styrofoam, wrapped them tightly with stretch gauze bandaging, and then sealed them with Mod Podge.  The yellowish color you see on the left one is the result of my frustration with having a hard time keeping track of where I had and where I hadn't applied the (white) Mod Podge to the (white) gauze wrap.  So I mixed a bit of yellow alcohol ink into the Modge Podge to give it enough color that I could track my progress.

 

There are no wings yet.  I'll make them and paint them separately then add them during the clothing process.  This is to solve the problem of how to make clothing sleeves around the wings - a problem that I've been contemplating for a while and which is impeding my progress on finished the two ducks I made for the Lady of the Lake grouping.

 

The legs are made from wire, wooden scewers, and florist tape.  I shaped the toes from the wire then wound the ends up around the scewer.  A wrap of floral tape holds everything in place and provides a surface for the paper clay to stick to.  When the legs were done, I poked them into the Styrofoam form.

 

I later learned that attaching the legs at this point was a mistake.  It's too early to know where they need to be for the chickens to balance.  The better plan is to wait until the paper clay bodies are done, then drill holes, and insert the skewers.  This procedure also makes it easier to cover the toes with paper clay.  I can cover the toes and part way up the leg before attaching the legs to the body, then finish the attachment - and the sculpting - by adding the paper clay for the bulges at the top of the legs.  Lesson learned!

The Finished Scratchboard Fox

 

Here's the final scratchboard fox.  I did a second layer of color, this time with thin washes of Liquitex soft body acrylics, then another layer of scratching, and finally a few more washes.

 

I'm reasonably happy with the result, but unless I can come to terms with the difficulty of the first layer of color I'm not sure I'll stick with it.  I will, however, try at least one more time using the soft body acrylics rather than acrylic inks for the first color layer.  Hopefully that will work better.

 

I do like the luminous color one gets with the bright white clayboard shining through the paint.

Trying Color Scratchboard

Can you believe how ugly this is?  Well, thankfully, it was just the beginning.  Last weekend I took a brief scratchboard workshop from Linda Heath Clark, one of our art group's members.  Linda is quite an accomplished scratchboard artist and an excellent teacher.  She has even taught a workshop at the Smithsonian.  You would never guess that from this student's work!





I was expecting that we would work on the regular black scratchboard, but instead she taught us this color technique.

 

 We worked on clayboard.  The first step was to cover the board with acrylic inks and this is where it was really tough and frustrating.  I consider myself to be a decent painter, but I just couldn't get this ink on this surface to do what I wanted.  The ink wanted to puddle and I found it impossible to get a smooth stroke. But Linda convinced me that it would work out OK, so I persevered and proceeded to the scratching step.

 

This is what my fox looked like after about two and a half hours of scratching little lines through the dried ink into the layer of white clay on the clayboard.  Better, but still not done,  And as you can see, since I didn't scratch any lines in the background area, that part still looks like a mess.

 

From here, the technique is to wash over the painting with thin washes of color.  This will both deepen the color of the unscratched portions and push back the white scratches by giving them a bit of color.  So I will continue to work on this piece and then we'll see what's what!