Soaring with bird sculptures
My new obsession with bird sculptures has ignited a curiosity in me that I haven’t felt in a long time.
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For the last four to five weeks, I’ve been enthralled with birds. Reading about them, watching them, making them, you name it. While I’ve always been intrigued by the natural harmony that appears between birds and flowers (much reflected in my admiration for patterns (William Morris), art (Traditional Chinese art and Chinoiserie) and ornamentation). The last time I felt this way was when I discovered flowers.
Why this sudden obsession? I’m not sure. It slowly crept up on me as I began to have more time to notice more of my natural surroundings. About a month ago, I was walking home after drop off, and I noticed something blowing in the wind. Something landed right in front of my path. When something like this happens, you just have to go with it. I picked it up. It was a small brown and gray feather, easy to spot against the white snow. Tiny and delicate, no larger than my son’s thumb, the feather edges fluttered in the wind. It had a fuzziness to it, like down feather I’d seen in my pillows. Fluffy rather than stiff. When I looked up, I saw more feathers dropping along my path. So I chased after them.
Female American Goldfinch made from paper and wool
I didn’t think much of this afterwards. I simply took joy in holding the feathers and imagined cupping them was like cupping a real bird.
Every now and then, I’d think about the feathers and I would wonder. Observing these feathers in person sparked ideas in my mind of how they might be re-created. Many paper artists I follow had shared their wonderful paper feather creations (some looked so crazy real), and yet feeling this tiny feather in my hand, it didn’t present itself as paper to me. I follow a few felt artists used wool to mimic fur and feathers, and their natural medium felt more similar to me.
To back up a bit - about a year ago, I took a course on Domestika by Diana Beltran Herrera, a paper sculptural artist known for her colourful and graphic interpretations of birds, insects, and fauna. It was called “Advanced Papercraft Techniques: Designing with Paper” and I took it because I was curious about her process of creating bird after bird after bird, without seemingly having to re-invent the wheel every time. Personally, I’m still trying to find a system that would make it more efficient for me when approaching a new flower, a new insect, a new bird (now). Steps that would work for every project and give me a roadmap (and in truth, confidence) that all will be well. It’s truly a personal journey.
Diana was so generous in sharing her knowledge and experience, and her process of templating a bird. I was so inspired that I took some of the templating ideas she had and used them on my butterflies. If you’ve taken my Monarch Butterfly online course, you would have gone through those templating steps, and you would have seen how easy it is to repeat the process on every butterfly you want to make.
Male American Goldfinch made with paper and wool
Fast forward a year later, I re-watched Diana’s course with the intention of piggybacking on some of her techniques. I made the templates for my American Goldfinch using her technique of tracing the feathers from reference images, building the skeleton with strips of card stock as she did, and similarly making the legs with wire. I adapted the mediums I chose to use - crepe paper and wool - utilizing different colouring and cutting methods.
I knew I wanted my bird to look less stiff, less graphic, and “softer” than Diana’s bold interpretations. Closely familiar with the limitations of crepe paper, I knew I had to look to other mediums to experiment with, and knowing a little bit of the properties of wool (I used it in my Monarch Butterfly online course and having seen felt artists use it very successfully on long-haired animals and birds), I surmised that it could be successful at mimicking the fluffy down feathers of the Goldfinch.
I was quite happy with my first go at it. I made a female American Goldfinch. I won’t lie - I faced a number of challenges however, they were incredibly fun and fulfilling to work out. I had to figure out a way to adhere the wool on the paper structure so it would look natural, and figure out how to make the eyes and give the face enough details. These were completely outside of my expertise and I am still working at improving my techniques.
I managed to document most of the process by sharing my challenges in my Instagram Stories. You can view some of the videos below.