Friday 5 June 2015

Big Horn Sheep ..........finally

I can't send my bears and birches off to my sister without including some sheep. It's one of the things her guests comment on and one of the things I've never done.
They're not terrible photogenic and frankly they're dirty and shaggy. Not the easiest thing to duplicate.


So I took a little lesson from "disney" and decided to clean them up a bit.
I was most confounded by the horns. They are iconoclastic and multidimensional. I think, as I had done so many things in the recent past that were dimensional, I assumed I needed to do this. Once I got that out my head I could move forward.
I started with the simplest... the fabric print that I had put in my grandniece's quilt, the kind gift from a total stranger.


And I decided to use plain fabrics.....sort of. As a nod to the dynamics of their horns I made them out of batting. covered with netting. 
The netting also allowed me to hint at shadow. Just enough to add to their shape.


So the batting is an off white, the netting is black and the thread was a beige. A reasonable rendition of aged horns.


Now that I have all the features in, I can think about how much thread painting this ram needs.

I'm told they're shaggy. That's kind of hard and messy to do. The mottled material suggests that, so I just went with heightening the shadows and giving texture to the rest. And as I really don't have the range of brown/grey thread that I'd like, I added some darker accents with....coloured pencil.

Its been a while since I've worked with "flat" material. I'll do something different with the next one....tomorrow.

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