Tawny Owls!

A new breed of owls has joined the Kaper menagerie! Hooray! :) I love making owls (as you may have guessed). Here's Mr Prototype, who doesn't look altogether very tawny right now, but he will:

I screen printed them in orange browns and rusty colours, with copper and pale gold lustres and some white. Because of the metallic lustres the colours I mix don't always dry as I might expect, so it is always exciting to see what they'll look like once they're dry. I started building them up and soon had a merry little pile on my desk:


These are the little guys with and without their facial disk feathers. I was undecided whether to make the baby faces as feathery as their grown ups, but I soon discovered this was my favourite part of making them, so I decided to collage their tufty faces too :) I was asked to make tawnies for a special commission, so I made them in multiple sizes from the start, so that my customer had the most amount of choice about her final design. Usually I only make three sizes to start (1 adult, 1 small adult and 1 baby) and then when people make requests for bigger/smaller siblings I add more over time.. My tawnies have 3 adult and 3 baby sizes already, which has been lovely creating an instant parliament!


It might be a bit hard to tell from photos, but they all have different markings and colour palettes.



And here are the finished pieces! I've been a bit unwell over the past week or so, so I've had real trouble sleeping (I think I've managed 2 hours a night! EEK! I'm better now though, yay!) and I spent most of my nights watching reruns of Prison Break (I had forgotten how much I liked that program). I like to name my owls after geniuses, since owls are such clever fellas and Michael Scofield is a genius, so I decided to name them after the brothers. Pictured above are Lincoln & Burrows. Below are Scofield & Miller. (I can't have a Michael; Michelangelo is the name of a hoot owl.)


And here's the first anniversary piece I made for a lovely couple to adorn their nursery:


Look out for these little guys making an appearance in my etsy shop this week and in my studio at Manchester Craft and Design Centre.

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