A New Avatar

I'm working on my etsy shop and trying to improve my marketing.  The first part of that effort was creating an avatar for my shop that I could also use on my business cards.  So here it is - a fox in a rather wild garden of ferns and violets.  It turns out to be a bit busy and detailed for the avatar when it displays small, but it should look good on my business cards, which should arrive from the printer in a few days.  It also looked great on the heading of my newsletter.  So - mission accomplished!

By the way, this is watercolor pencil and sepia ink (with a crowquill pen tip) on Strathmore mixed media paper.  I really like this paper!

In the spring several large linbs came down off one of my digger pines and I harvested the needles.  Also, around the same time, I made three sets of stoneware centers for pine baskets.  And the other day the urge just struck me to make one.

I enjoy making pine needle baskets, but it's one of the lowest pay-off activities (what you get versus the time you put into it) I know of.  Nonetheless, here is the result.

I very much like the little rabbit.  But the color combined with the dull tones of the pine needles really doesn't do much for me.  I thought about washing over the basket with thinned down acrylic.  But I used artificial sinew to sew the basket and it is very waxy.  So it's likely that it would have repelled the paint - altogether not an experiment to do on a finished piece.  So I livened the design up by adding the "nest" of pine needles and some stone dangles.  After I took these photos, I painted small runes on some of the stones - runes whose meaning fits with the symbolism of rabbit.

 

All in all, not a highly successful piece, but at least I finished it!



Next -- a Rabbit

Then it was on to a rabbit!  Once again, I began with an armature made from an image of the skeleton.  But this time it was even more difficult because the skeleton indicates much more going on with a rabbit body than what we actually see - which is basically a ball of fluff with feet sticking out.  But I wanted the rabbit posable, so had to proceed this way.

There was an awful lot of filling space with wool, and I often worried about how much wool I was using.  It's not just the expense, but also that it seems a shame to "bury" perfectly good wool deep inside the body where it will never be seen.  I've wracked my brain trying to think of an alternative.  I've come up with a few but have rejected them.  One was wrapping with strips of old felted wool sweaters.  But those aren't either easy or cheap to come by - at least not here in California where they're not worn regularly.

So I persevered and here's the result.  For once, I found feet actually fun to make!  I'd like to make many more rabbits.  There are so many different breeds and colorings - an artist's playground!

A Squirrel is Next

My next felting project was a squirrel.  I just had to do one, given my history as a proud member of Sierra Wildlife Rescue's Squirrel Team.

 

It could be a Fox Squirrel or a Gray Squirrel, but I decided on a gray because the colors in a fox squirrel's coat are so complex.  That would be a project beyond my skills at this point.

 

The little fingers were tedious but worth it.  I'm still not good at wrapping those tiny tips and often have some of the underlying wire show through.  The wire for the fingers is 26 gauge cloth covered floral wire and it's white, so if any shows, it shows quite a bit against the black wool.  I used black wax on the tips, but it hardens with a bit of whitish translucence so isn't quite the best solution. I'll have to give further thought to that problem.

 

Despite making an armature that I thought pretty closely followed the squirrel skeleton images I found, the tail turned out to be too short.  So if I make another one, I'll plan to lengthen the tail armature by two inches or so.

 

But, all in all, pretty good.

 

An Albert's Squirrel would be fun to make with those long black ear tufts, or, now that I'm thinking about ear tufts, a linx.

Stab, Stab, Stab - More Needle Felting

This time, a cat slowly emerged from the needle and felt.  I had a really hard time with it though, to the point that I nearly threw it away!  But then I remembered that you don't learn anything by giving up.  Plus, I believed that somehow I could make it work.

I began by finding an image of a cat skeleton on the internet, then drew the main bones to the size I wanted my finished animal to be.  From there, I assembled the wire armature.  I think my problem was that it just takes so many layers to add enough wool and it looked weird for so long.  Plus, after a bit I focused on the head.  So the head got really large in comparison to the body, and it looked even weirder.

I think the method of starting out with a more-or-less real skeleton armature may cause problems through the process, but in the end it gives an animal that is nicely posable.

Even with drawing and painting, I've found cats to be the hardest animals.   And the tradition continues with needle-felting!

A Spectacled Bat

This was my next felting project - a spectacled bat.  He is a type of "flying fox" which is a group of old world bats.  The old world has cuter bats than the new world.  And they're also bigger - at least some of them.  I read somewhere before that 1/4 of the world's mammal species are bats, and now I've read it in one of the bat rescue hospital websites, so I assume that it's true - an amazing!  I was inspired to do a little research on bats after seeing bats in the dusk sky here several days in a row.

The hardest part of this project was designing the wings.  I ended up taking my first effort apart and redesigning the armature.  It would have been nice to use a more luxurious fabric for the wings, such as silk or silk velvet.  But I ended up using "performance fabric" - a fabric that I assume is for sports clothing - for two reasons.  The first was that it stretches along the selvage, across the selvage, and diagonally.  I thought that the "give" would be necessary in posing and re-posing the wings.  The second reason was that I knew I would be stabbing through it with the felting needle since it is attached to the body all along the sides.  I considered a jersey, but rejected it because I thought it might run if I stabbed it wrong.  And I rejected the silk because it didn't stretch.

The performance fabric has a subtle sheen which I think is appropriate for the skin covering the wings and, all in all, I'm happy with the choice.

One thing I wish I had done was provide a way to hang him - something that would attach to the armature for strength.  If I make another bat, I'll have to solve that problem.

The Fennec Fox has a Buddy

I made a second fennec fox today.  I wanted to see if it was repeatable from the diagram I had, and it was!

The second one was easier because I knew more of what I was doing.  Even though I began with the same full-size drawing for my armature, of course she turned out a bit different from the first one.  For one thing, I knew to make the ears bigger.  Also, though not trying to do so, her nose is pointier. 

All in all, I think the second one looks more like a fennec fox.  But, believe it or not, the ears are still too small!

This is FUN!