Friday, June 7, 2013

Quilled National Bird.........

Dear All,

Quilling a peacock had been a long-standing dream of mine :) So, when Shital asked me if I would do a peacock, I jumped but almost immediately followed panic attacks. For anyone who has seen a peacock up close, figuring the plume colours out is like trying to count the number of cells in out body! It's a spectacularly beautiful bird, and correspondingly difficult to quill!!!!!

Here we go with the finished project :)



Stage 1 was simplified greatly by Shital by providing the base on which  the peacock was to be made. And Stage 2 stumped me for quite some time. The correct blue was impossible to find in shimmer texture. I scoured the old city markets but the correct blue seems to have disappeared from the face of this Earth! Bless Fevicryl, they keep coming up with products that have often been life savers for my craft needs!!!!!

The latest (HEAVILY recommended) range of sparkle paints came to my rescue. The hues in these paints are brilliant and affordability? Ah, Fevicryl style, they are extremely reasonably price :) So, I took the waste paper left over from paper cutting for text strips and painted sheets after sheets in the blues and greens. I wish I had taken photos of that too! Thanks to high humidity, the papers took forever to dry and forever looked soggy from all the paint......

To make the body of the peacock look 3D, I resorted to Panduro air-dry clay. I'm no clay expert, so please excuse the undulated surface! :D I randomly cut out another waste paper (left over from sample printing) into  peacock body shape and adjusted clay to the shape.








Making the peacock body feathers was the most strenuous part of this project. I used my Martha Stewart teardrop punch for punching out really small tear drops of the sparkling blue paper. Then started the arduous task of fringing these teardrops with a width of ~ 0.3 mm. My eyes are probably hurting because of this strain ;) But after about 300 of these, the upper body of the peacock began to take shape :)






Peacock doesn't really make your life easy! :D It's "flying wings" are random shades of black, white and brick red. My empirical methods came to the rescue! :D I drew random lines on white paper and thus resulted the flying wings of the peacock :)



The plume "base" was again air-drying clay, flattened to provide a shallow base for the feathers to rest on top.

It was the GREEN of the feathers that took maximum creativity! Phew! I have used Sparkle Pearl Green by Fevicryl as the base. On top went hints of Sparkle Pearl Blue and Sparkle Pearl Violet. The slightest tinges of brownish are Daler Rowney Bronze acrylic paint, which was used by dabbing a cotton ball in the paint and then tinging VERY lightly over the feather. This "process" took almost 15 iterations to get right! My room looks like a peacock has been beaten to death there, with so many "feathers" lying around! ;)





The "eyes" of the feathers are made out of 1 mm strips hand-cut out of 120 gsm beige shimmer paper. The tight coils were shaped and then, coloured from top. The colours remain the same, except green, which is Pearl Green by Fevicryl.





The rest, I think, is pretty self-explanatory. :) I HAVE TO thank my feedback system here :) 

The first in this list is Pri, who communicated right at 6 am or so (IST) and planted the 1 mm strips idea in my head :) You're a DARLING lady! You have no idea that I owe you my career :)

Second is a very what-you-see-is-what-you-get lady, who has never let me down. She always provides honest feedback, whether I like it or not ;) So, a MILLION thanks Ketaki

My life line, my baby, Baba always has been a pillar of strength, the one who managed to talk me into quilling, in the first place! :D As always, her feedback was forever available, so that Didi never wavered from her task at hand :)

One lady who has never failed at giving me feedback, that too in detail, is Manu. She diligently writes back, not just with feedback but also, suggestions about what and how I can use to make my projects better. 

And yeah, thanks to other people who put up with my incessant Whatsapp messages! Thanks Tarun, Sanasi, Meg, Yamini! You guys mean a LOT! Keep twisting my ears whenever you feel I'm losing focus :) 

Happy Quilling

Pritesh

PS: If my posts inspire you to create something on similar lines, I feel highly flattered. But please, do respect the effort I take in conceptualizing and executing, please give a direct link to my work when you are inspired by mine. Thanks for understanding........:-)

36 comments:

Sathya said...

Wowwwww..Pritesh..Awesome detailing...Love every bit of this work :) Hats off to ur creativity!!

Sadia Navaid said...

Lovely.. No wonder you made a great peacock ... Good job!!

PMT~ Meg said...

Pritesh, this is wonderful! And it solves the riddle of all the 'micro-quilling' that you were doing. Definitely worth the time and effort.

Artes de NĂ¡gela said...

Pritesh,
You were perfect in making this work. The result is fantastic!
Hugs!

Bronwyn said...

Beautiful!

Unknown said...

Grand...awesome.....you r the perfect one:-)
Day started with this beautiful piece of art...what else is required ....this is really beautiful :-)

Unknown said...

Grand...awesome..d perfect:-)
day started by seeing this beautiful piece of art...what else do you need? ...its really beautiful and so so innovative:-)

Shylaashree said...

could feel the peacock over there dear, add legs if possible, it will rock

Maria Rose said...

awesome work :).. am jealous of your creativity Pritesh :P

Nupur Priya said...

Awesome.... This is exceptionally beautiful Pritesh... This time you outdid yourself.. :)
Love every bit of it.. Seems like a real peacock..

Unknown said...

This is beautiful...Beautiful is a small word and description for this piece of art and I am stumped by the amount of work and hardwork gone in it.No wonder the results are fantastic.

Unknown said...

exquisite detailing, Pritesh. Very good job. And teh explanation is much appreciated.
Here's a suggestion. Would you like to add a branch to ground your peacock...give it stability on your page since it looks like its resting on something and not in flight.
But besides that, more power to you. You never cease to amaze.

Suman Pandit said...

This is gorgeous Pritesh, thanx for the pics and the process!! The journey with you is as beautiful as the final destination!! the feathers need a special mention.....they look so real and have the shimmer, delicacy and grandeur of the original!!

ManuK said...

Ah, yes! I knew you'd surprise me with this project! I'm looking at those gorgeous tail feathers and all I can think is "I want to touch them!". Haha!
I am so glad that you shared so many step-by-step photos and explained how you managed to put together this beauty. How I wish I could see it for real and analyze all the little details!
And thank you for mentioning me, I love it when you send me pictures with your projects :)

Hugs!

Bhawana said...

truely talented in real sense.... no other words can describe this work.

Charu Joshi said...

Ohh my goodness.... this is simply gr8 !! amazing work... loved it completely... :)

Rashi Bajaj said...

Absolutely in love with your creation and Hats off to the pains you took for the feathers. The body gets a perfect finish with the blue ones...

Rashi Bajaj said...

Absolutely in love with your creation and Hats off to the pains you took for the feathers. The body gets a perfect finish with the blue ones...

Otilia said...

This is very beautiful Pritesh, but I think in reality it´s even more beautiful. Maybe you should take a closer picture to the finished tale.
Congratulations for you patience. I think you spent many days in making it.

Unknown said...

Wov Lovely pecock...thanks for detail explanation.

http://athomecanbefun.blogspot.com

Pritesh Dagur said...

Thanks a lot Sathya, Saad, Meg (I know, but given half a chance, I'd do text instead :D), Nagela, Bronwyn, Rakhi, Shylashree, Rose (I'm sure you have it all within you :)), Nupur, Snehal, Natasha (as I said, I wish was to make the full project but I'll await the completion myself), Suman (so sweet of you), Manu (you know how much I appreciate your feedback and suggestions), Bhawana, Charu, Rashi, Otilia (I will take more photos, for sure) & Sheetal :)

Hima Bindhu said...

wow wow wow :) Very creative. The feathers of the peacock looks so real. Amazing work :)

Unknown said...

Loved it!!! Super detailing....i

Chandana said...

Amazing loved every bit of it .I am grt fan of your work and it has inspired me a lot.

IIJInstitute said...

Much appreciated efforts to make a peacock. Your enthusiasm and concentration made it possible. I will utilize your concept for my Diploma in Jewellery Designing and share with you soon.

Christine said...

Oh My gosh !!! You have an amazing amount of patients!! I wish I had an infinitesimal amount of yours!! But you have made the best peacock that I will ever see made from paper. Wow girl!! your name needs to get on the Guinness book!!
Please tell me what you make of my lion.
http://ajourneyintoquilling.blogspot.com
Chris

painted princess collection said...

lovely tutorial well presented
good luck
anandhi

Hema said...

Awesome ..... Am so much in love with this ....

happyexperimenting.blogspot.com

Hema said...

Awesome ... Am so much in love with this

happyexperimenting.blogspot.com

Celia said...

Beautiful!!
Love your crafts and your blog!
Regards :)

Check out my blog, I hope you like it :
elblogdelasfofuchas.blogspot.com.es

Jazzy said...

Pritesh, this looks fantabulous.. i never thought my Fevicryl colors can give such a great output. m really in love with you and your techniques.. God Bless thanks for the post.

Swapna Pore said...

what a beautiful piece of art! can you please tell me the craft stores in pune
swapnascraft.blogspot.com

Unknown said...

wow! this is AMAZING! thank you for showing us how you did it!

WhiteRacoon said...

Wow!!! I've missed a lot since my last visit.. that gorgeous bird is simply mindblowing! Can't believe you fringed all the feathers! Very inventive wing work. Pretty, attractive and captivating coloring job. And absolutely adorable tail! Wow..

Sindhya said...

Pritesh, cannot stop myself from posting a comment. Your works are awesome! Keep quilling :-)

Nagamani said...

Pritesh, Came across this blog while browsing for some quilling patterns. This work is amazing and inspiring. Even since, I've seen this, I couldn't stop myself from attemping one. Here is my version of peacock:
http://quillingzone.blogspot.com/2014/06/paper-peacock.html

Regards
Nagamani