Sunday, May 23, 2010

Heidi's book - all birds

I guess I'm just in a bird mood.

Birds in circles:



I was inspired by Heidi's piece Hidden Mouth where she applied a selected varnish to the lips in the piece. I thought it would be interesting to stencil a design in glossy black paint on top of a matte black background. It worked pretty well, except peeling up the stencil left some specks and damage to the matte black. To distract from that, I speckled the pages with shades of black and grey paint so the little flaws are hard to spot:



This is a two-part piece, first the painting:



Then I designed a paper-craft version of the same bird, based on the Nani-bird pattern:



I included two prints of the project page on cardstock in Heidi's pocket (an extra in case one gets flubbed), but I've also made the PDF available for download in case anyone else wants to make one. Right-click that link to download, then print it on cardstock, and cut, fold and glue. It's just about the easiest paper-craft project I've ever come across and there are tons more free versions you can download from the Nani Bird website.

Here's what the pattern looks like. It's almost easier to not bother reading the directions:

10 comments:

steve said...

Insane!!! You're a freakin' genius!

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

WHAT A RIOT!!! So much fun, and wonderfully done! Very creative!!

Unknown said...

Wo! i love the raven page! and the 3D bird it too awesome for words!

Mary Stebbins Taitt said...

that raven is COOL! They are all cool.

I love ravens.

mckibillo said...

Heidi-

I love it! Would you consider letting me post for download at http://www.nanibird.com ?

Would love to have it be part of a Batch release.

Thanks

Mike Kline said...

Wow! I am in awe...

ballookey said...

Aww, shucks! Thanks guys! ;)

@Josh: I got your e-mail and will reply to that directly.

henniemavis said...

Unbelievable. I LOVE birds! I especially like the goldfinch circle... and the Poe quotes from the Raven, how did you know? It's one of my favorite poems! (I've been to the Poe Museum in Richmond VA, btw.) I am still amused by your picnic-bird videos... http://www.flickr.com/photos/ballookey/4337813193/

The cut'n'fold bird toy, you got me pegged there, too. Fiddling with things artistically 3-D is great fun! Thank you :-)

ballookey said...

@Heidi: inside the front of your book there's a big owl and a raven/crow plus Mike's collaboration was bird-themed so I thought that would be a good theme to go with. I'm so glad you like it. :)

milo said...

brilliant!