Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Children's Books Display - Part 14





The next character was the chicken. She was relatively simple, though I wish I'd given her a more exaggerated, cartoony shape with a longer neck and smaller head. Essentially she was a newspaper wad body and head. When this form was made, i paper mached it, then after it was dry, cut open her belly, removed the newspaper stuffing and replaced it with one of those green styrofoam balls used for arranging plastic plants. This ball was a good anchor for her legs which were simply a couple of wooden dowels. Her toes were the same heavy gauge florist wire I'd been using on other characters. I paper mached her closed, then attached wings, and a comb cut from a cereal box. These were also covered in paper mache.



Her beak was simply a pyramid shaped attachment made from the paper pulp/wheat paste mixture mentioned in earlier posts.



The chicken was then primed...


...and painted. I wasn't so sure about the width of the black stripes on her legs, and almost painted over them, leaving them just a plain orange, but felt it gave her character.



Originally, she was going to have a copy of "Animal Fair" tucked under her wing, but it just didn't look right, so I left it out. I tried hard to get this to work since Alice and Martin Provensen are favorites of mine and I wanted to include them in the display, but it was not to be.

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