Technique Tuesday: Creating Bird Heads, Part 1

I've posted, both on the blog and YouTube, the basic steps to creating the heads of my dolls. For example, in this post from 2010, I describe the process from design to completion for a Tundra Swan. The simplest of bird heads, believe it or not, is a Vulture, and I gave a brief rundown on the steps about a year ago in this post.

Mammals are pretty easy, just layers and layers of felt to get the shape I want. Birds also have unique head conformations, but the main difficulty is due to the beak. Each species requires a unique shape and sculpting the beak takes a lot of time. But before I delve into that topic, I thought I would show you how each head begins with a layer of wool around a finished beak. My latest YouTube video covers the basics of the bird head, and this video, along with my previous video about animal heads gives you a good foundation for trying this technique yourself.

In the next two weeks I'll share videos describing how I make the beaks for my birds. Stay tuned...