Holiday project in Paper Magiclay

 Happy Holidays to you all! Hope you have a wonderful and creative season.
What are you up to during the holiday break? Don't let all that food, drink, family and festivities distract you from your art - but don't stress either. Maybe have a play with something fun and new... like this...

Tina gave me a packet of Paper Magiclay to fool around with and I decided to create a mask as part of a series of works based on the books by Alan Garner I am working on for an exhibition at Blarney Books later in the new year. For my first attempt with this Magiclay I decided to create a mask of an owl, referencing the fourth book he wrote: 'The Owl Service'.

The Magiclay is rather different to work with than air dry clay or traditional clay. It has an interesting texture - sort of like nougat without being sticky.  It is a very soft, lightweight molding compound. It is quite elastic to use and not at all tacky, but it adheres well to surfaces that are either wet or dry. Once dry the clay is very lightweight and feels like paper. It is very clean to work with and dries quickly. Because I had a thick blob of it to create the beak of my owl, I let it dry overnight, although the bulk of it felt dry after an hour or so.

Here is the current state of the mask - Starting with a plain white mask (thank you Tina for this as well!), I trimmed the mask of the high forehead and mouth and jaw sections to create a reduced size mask. I began with the beak first using a large blob of the stuff and molding it into shape and sticking it into position. Next, I made some thick 'worms' that I rolled flat to create layers of clay that were progressively placed into position on the mask to start forming the feather structure. Each layer was scored with the clay pin tool. I found that the Magiclay did not quite create finer details as well as air dry or traditional clay and I wasn't totally happy with the effect as it didn't quite look so feathery. But seeing that the Magiclay was so elastic I started to snip the edges with nail scissors which worked a treat! You can't do that with air dry clay! Continuing to build up form and layers of feathers I molded and snipped and layered until I ended up with a reasonable facsimile of an owl face. 

Here is the current state of the mask. I have sealed it with a layer of Golden acrylic gesso and once that is dry, I will start to paint it with acrylics. It is very light and seems quite strong.

So that is my holiday project! Once I have it painted up and sealed with gloss media, I will show you the final result. In the meantime, wishing you all the very best with this vintage card I found by my favorite Australian artist, Lionel Lindsay: