Grandpa, What Did You Do During the Pandemic?
This past year my three grandkids have commissioned some birthday presents from me.
I’ve posted some photos before of the unicorn wand…
…which was the first commission, made for my granddaughter. The next, for the youngest grandson, was a request for a double sheath to hold a wooden axe and sword (completed successfully, but without photos). Next came a request from the oldest for a sculpture of an owl. I thought the LGF readers might be interested in the process, so this time I remembered to take pictures.
Don’s Gallimaufry of Imponderables
I realized there was not enough time to complete a sculpture before his birthday, so I made a stopgap owl, drawing one with the wood-burning tool onto a wooden book/secret drawer I picked up years ago in a craft store.
Owl Be Seeing You In All The Old Familiar Places
Contents are various objects my kid self collected that my mother had stuck in her attic:
A Mardi Gras coin, Free Loaf Bread tokens from my grandfather’s grocery store, some agate marbles, CONTENTS ENCLOSED rubber stamp, a small collection of European coins, a Pecten shell, a wooden fork, a bamboo toy snake.
On the other side: Wordle Squared.
So that bought me some time.
Next step was to build a worktable out of some old decking timber and mount a vise to hold
the wood (a section of trunk from one of the ash trees on the property which had died in the last drought).
It’s a nice working environment.
The ash wood is hard and heavy, but tends to get a little splintery in detail areas, so I decided to make the beak by gluing a piece of ebony an inch deep into the face, and shaping the beak into that. That led to sanding down some more ebony into dowels for the eyes.
Eyes drilled…
…plugged…
… and smoothed.
Then it occurred to me I could make some more realistic irises out of brass.
I dug out donut shapes from the ebony eyes, leaving little ebony pegs for the pupils.
The brass washers fitted tightly over the pegs, into the holes.
Once the basic shape was done and the eyes and feet set, the project switched from sculpture to surface detailing, becoming a three dimensional drawing. I used a simple chisel-tip woodburning tool to burn in each mark to simulate the feather patterns.
Each mark took a few seconds to burn in.
So that’s it! For the past year’s birthdays, at least. I’m happy to get this one done so I can stop looking at the anatomical flaws I should have caught in the early stages and move on to something less realistic and more fanciful, which is more my speed.
Like this Wallfish thing, which I’ve been working on during breaks from the owl.