goldfinch

April 8th 2022

I've been hanging out around a ranger station and eating dirt about it, and I wanted to gift a little give.

Thought the most aptly would be goldfinch because it's the state bird... despite not actually having spotted one with my own two eyes around the here. YETCH. maybe eventually! best not to be hopless on the prospects of witnessing the feathery people.

Oh yeah I should probably mention that I made this entire guy in the span of a single night. Don't do that. WOO lemme tell ya my arm was SORE.

GALLERY

To be that of a male American goldfinch, in breeding plumage.

The body is a bright yellow with a white belly. there is a black cap on top of the head above the eyes. the wings and tail are black with white speckles. Both the beak and feet are dark orange. the feet have curled in toes, to hang on to stuff. This figurine is around 4 inches in length, with the tail adding on 2 more. the wings are stuck close to the body and folded.

hand1 hnd2 hand 3

hand 4 hand5 hand 6

pole1 face pole2

throw 1 throw 2

me:)

With a safety pin, I could have a companion on my hat:)

and with the wanting of not-showing-my-actual-face by wearing hood backwards and sunglasses on top, it was nigh difficult to get a good shot.

dogwood cedar pole bamboo

WIPs

ball wrapball wrap colors

SO I would usually go and use some bit of polyester or what have as the inner core... But this time I just used a sheet of craft felt. strategically folded it up- instead of just scrunching it up into a ball- and punched the corners in.

Wrapped gray around, and then pulled out the various colors to be needed.

Alongside the single-needle, I took out The Octopus... Normally can hold 8 needles hence the octo-name... 4 is good enough.

blood wrap whit wrap yellow

I have a complicated relationship with Octopus, because I can stab myself so goddamn easily with increased surface area that the tool covers. Nevertheless I put -myself- into my art... Then put a layer of white wool to even out the underlay before putting the first of yellow colors.

yarn gradiant basic body

The yellow I had diseccted some yarn apart. Burning a bit beforehand to make sure it wasn't acrylic. Burnt hair smells bad, do it near windows.

Mixed white, yellow and off-white to get a bit of a gradiant effect on the lower belly. I kept the tail nub weak for later on when I'm to attach the actual tail part by the fibers.

tail n wing dry tail n wing wet make wet dry

Now to make the tail/wings. Seperate pieces that came from a wetting process. Now usually I go for slapping down at least 4 layers on JUST the backing. But this was only 4 layers in total. 2 of the grey, one of black, and then 1 for the white/yellow parts.

Also I would usually go for the process of shrinkage, but I've already deviated from the normal procedures this much. I only rolled out the fibers together just at the bare minimum to where they hold eachother... ~20 minutes. That's barely nothing. AS WELL I only let air dry for that same amount of time because I didn't want to wait the whole night. rolling pin it all out baybee!

beak eyes tail

Doing head stuff. Beak and eyes are deemed important to have. There's the tail. Punch it inward, refine the shape which would actually go for thickening the piece up which would give it the strength that the rolling process would have given anyway.

tail on wing tile wing shape

After tail come the wings, starting out with the same shitty state. weak and flaccid. just a simple tug would have it all fall apart. As the tail I refined the shape and giving the better qualities as I do so.

wing front refine wing front fixed wing back fixed

Refine the shape. Get stabbed in the process. yknow how it is. Get some feather shapes on the bottom. wahoo.

wings off wings on

if wings are <"off">: make <"on">

feet ball feet shape feet curl

Then at the last second I decided I wanted to put feet on, so that it can hang off of stuff. What's another hour into the deep dark night?

hold