Henrietta Hen tutorial Part 3

This is part 3 of the making and painting of my latest project Henrietta Hen. For those of you who are just seeing this, you can find part 1 and 2 under my painting tutorial links. NOTE: I started another chicken today, I documented the working with clay a bit more in depth. I have added pictures of this new chicken and the clay work to part 1 if you want to check it out!

 



Here are my colors all ready for basecoating my chicken. I will do all the entire body, head, wings and upper legs. My sea sponge has been dipped in water and wrung out, it needs to be damp.

 

I am in the process here of covering the fabric with my colors, see how they show slight tone variations and look a bit marbled? Notice as well I am wearing gloves for this messy job! She sits on a paper plate so my table won't get too much paint.

 

And here she is completely covered with paint that I have sponged on. During this painting session I had to keep adding more paint to my sponge as worked.

 

And a nice pair of chicken wings all painted up as well. You can see by the plate how much it is needed to contain the mess. A word about wings here, I do not own actual chickens so in my ingnorant bliss I ended up putting these wings on my chicken backwards! My sweet friend brought this to my attention. She said that the long edge was supposed to be in the front with the short ones to the back. SIGH..... too late, henrietta is just going to have to be (special) her wings are glued on by the time I find this out!

 

These toothpicks work so nifty for holding my beak and comb while they are being painted and are drying! Honestly, what would I do without foam plates either, do you see how much I use them?

 

I have positioned my painted clay pieces where I want them, lightly marked where they go with a pencil. I coated the comb with some fabri-tac glue and glued it on. For the beak I glued it on with a toothpick glued in the beak so it would have more stability being such a small piece. See, I am not realizing here that the wings should be flipped the other way...:-(

 

I am ready to hot glue her wings into place

 

I have just added a float of burnt umber around the beak and where the comb meets the fabric. I added some burnt umber in the nose hole and added a line of burnt umber between the upper and lower beak. I let this dry and decide it isn't enough and do it again.

 

This sideview shows that I floated some burnt umber on the lower section of the comb itself, you can see how it is darker there. All this shadowing is important, it is the difference between your piece looking stark and boring or having depth.

 

Oh oh!!! I knew I was forgetting something, this hen needs a wattle. Excuse me while I take a 30 minute break to draw one out, sew it and paint it....

 

Okay I am back! I made the wattle out of sewn fabric that I lightly stuffed, then painted on both sides. I am sure you are wondering what kind of torture this poor chicken is enduring.... I have glued the wattle to the head and am holding it in place with straight pins until it dries! No wonder my artwork would much rather live with someone else after all my abuse!

 

Oh my and yet more abuse to this little hen.... I found the button I liked the size of and am using it to draw in some eyes.

 

Next I will paint the eyes, eyelashes and other details. This handy dandy magnifying- tool below helps me see my things close up so I do a neat job!

 

Here she is with her eyes filled in with black. Next we will be adding more detail to this little chicken.

 

This will be the end of part 3. Part 4 will be on there very soon! I worked hard on the actual pattern today and that will be released soon as well. These things take time....

 

NOTE: don't forget to check out part 1 again for my added photos and adding the clay!