I'm going to try something new here, and post a Work In Progress! I'm super excited about this new guy, and thought Id share a little bit of the process of working on him.
Initial shapes cut and glued, with no layers or hand-coloring yet.
Some details on the face glued in, and mother-of-pearl eyes added.
The face and body is basically finished here, although the wings and tail still have a lot of detail work to be done. I still need to cut the arch for the top of the window plus the open hinged window panes, and he's going to eventually have a large open book and lots of stacked and leaning books in the foreground. If anyone here has book title suggestions, Id love to hear them! Harry Potter will be there somewhere, for sure...but beyond that I haven't given the books a lot of thought, so its wide open. No title for the piece yet either, although I'm leaning towards "Night Light" or Night Vision" (sadly, I already have an older piece called "Night Owl").
The arch for the window is going to be a little challenging. Although you cant tell because this photo COMPLETELY washed out the texture, the whole window frame is made of wood (birch). I'm going to have to figure out how to cut a nice neat curve out of wood inlay...yikes. The wood will also be getting a coat of stain, shadowing parts of it and deepening the color a lot.