Eagle Feathers
Volumes and individual shapes are the essence of detailing hair and feathers on wildlife. Both require patience beyond human endurance. After hours and hours of doing this stuff you want to say “just waterboard me and get it overwith!” Well maybe not that bad. But I do have to take frequent breaks from this, more because of the intense concentration it requires of me. It can’t be hurried. The major difficulty for me is the sort of X-Ray vision that it demands. The ability, or extreme visual sense it requires, to see below the surface. Hair, feathers, and clothing on humans require the artist to be able to see the structure beneath those items, that ultimately supports them. From there, the particularly hard part, is to build up the material in your mind as it might bunch together or fall away from that substructure. That would be easier to do if I were working in clay, but when you work in wood or stone it becomes more problematic. Because those volumes only appear when everything else is subtracted from around them. The result is, I am constantly building up in my mind, while in actuality revealing those buildups through the reverse. Subtracting. It is an unsettling process for the mind. It is as if you were working against yourself. It is so taxing to me, I must get away for a time and relax. How do I do that and remain productive? I usually relax by starting a new sculpture. I just have to remember to keep progress happening on the one I am relaxing from, before the one I am relaxing with, gets to that same stage.
In the Image
Seen above, the work being done is to use the die grinder as a sketching tool, I use it to line out where the feathers will be located, as well as their shape. So the lines you see in the picture are simple grooves etched into the surface. My work leads with these grooves and then the followup is to layer them. They are layered as separate surfaces, similar to a deck of cards that was fanned out on a table. Yes! very time consuming….. but soooo necessary! This is why I don’t do many birds of this size.