Sunday, February 21, 2010

Birth of a kea, part 2

When we last saw our kea, he was a little blob with wings but no beak or legs. Let's move on then!

Some of the photos in this post are taken by my lovely assistant Stevan, and are therefore blurry and terrible, but well-intentioned!

Make and attach the tail in the same fashion as the wings; first I made a flat shape of the darkest color, then poked feather-shaped layers of different colors on top of it. Once it was constructed, I poked it onto the kea's body, adding a bit more of the dark-colored wool to the underside to better blend it.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Birth of a kea, part 1

HOW TO MAKE A KEA. In which I demonstrate my sew-free, sturdy and stable method of attaching non-wool beaks and legs to wool creturs!

First: make the body, out of core wool or batting (it is faster than roving, I think).

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Photo-heavy post!


TA-DAH! My best alebrije ever!




And to take full advantage of the loveliness of today's light (and the camera I borrowed from my friend Catherine), I re-photographed everybody else as well. Here's some photos of my two most sadly unloved creturs, whom I love enough to compensate for the public's apathy, I guess.

Bradford! You sexy heartbreaker.




Muscle pig! You hideously deformed bundle of love!

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

More previews, on two different fronts

The alebrije is done! Huzzah! But tomorrow, if weather.com is not lying, will be a much better day to take pictures. So for now I'll just show you the most exciting part:


The teeth are made of these great irregular beads I found. I love the way they look.

While I wait for tomorrow's clouds, I've not been idle. I know I am way behind on the keas. I'm sorry! I've been dyeing wool all day trying to get accurate kea colors and kicking myself for not choosing a solid-colored animal instead. But I'll make it work somehow!

Dyeing notes. Note the stray alebrije sketch and the hoatzin/springhaas drawings showing through from previous pages.

Of these tests drying outside, I can really only use the fourth one for the kea, maybe some of the third. Not that the other two will go unused!

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Hyena alebrije preview

Ah, poor little alebrije. If I didn't have two jobs, you'd be done by now.

A preview:


Monday, January 18, 2010

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Springhaas mishaps

Right! So, since you last saw our hero, he was armless and adorable. Trouble is, springhares don't really look like that. They look more like this:


So I made him less vertical, made his ears shorter, his eyes a little less wide, his face flatter and wider, and his feet longer. And gave him little T-Rex arms. Voila!


Then there was the matter of color. I decided to try dyeing him directly. So I applied the dye (Culinary Colors) with a foam brush, and stuck him in the microwave. I was nervous because I wasn't sure hot glue, which I had used for his eyes, was microwave-safe, so I probably didn't bake him as much as I should've.


The result was a sad, soggy, overly fuzzy, blotchy little dude. I gave him another coat and another ride in the microwave, but that didn't really help matters.


Evidently this would not do (or I was just going about it the wrong way, but the microwave-safeness of it made me nervous). So I went and bought myself some nice Corriedale top wool, and dyed it. No hot glue to worry about there, so it came out much nicer colors.



Then I set about applying it to the Springhaas, and learned that applying a top coat of wool is actually much less of a hassle when the under-wool is dyed a similar color, as opposed to white. Less top is required to make it look decent, which means less hours of work and less distortion of the core shape.



And that's where I'm at right now, woo!




Thursday, January 14, 2010

Next up: Springhaas

He still needs arms and some color, but I am so happy with the way he looks so far. I'm really hoping the dye job that awaits him doesn't ruin anything. He's already been subjected to a couple of experimental techniques just in the structural side of things.


Pedetes capensis