Thursday 9 June 2016

Pepe the penguin


Hello!  I was wondering whether to post or not - having posted these pictures on social media elsewhere - and then I noticed that once again, it's been almost a month since my last post!  Where has the time gone!

Anyway, I bet this is a surprise, after my previously posting about a bearded dragon!  I was getting very frustrated with my dragon design, and decided to take a step back, just briefly, and concentrate on something else for a while.  I've wanted to make a penguin for a while, and someone actually asked me recently if I might make one, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Getting the design together has been relatively easily - he's a heavily modified mash-up of my puffin and crow designs - and I was really happy with the cotton prototype I came up with.  He is a Humboldt penguin.  However, when I tried making him in a proper fur fabric - a lovely soft, Schulte viscose - it all went terribly wrong, and the result looked really clownish.  I ended up painting the prototype, and it looked good, so Pepe here is made in interfaced cotton, and painted in acrylics.  It's not ideal.  The paint is a bit visually flat, and obviously not as tactile as a fur fabric, but it is so versatile and gives a much, much better effect!  I have a precedent for using cotton in my barn owl, and I figure I can swap to a different fabric later if I change my mind.  I suppose I'm just worried that I'm taking the easy way out of a fabric dilemma.

Anyway, Pepe just needs his feet covering in paper mache, and he'll be good to go.  What do you think?  Does he pass muster?  :-)




1 comment:

Jack said...

Aww, this fabric penguin is just so cute, at first I thought its real and I was about to ask that. but then I read the complete post. Great work