Is it a skull or a bird...or both?

Here's something I made trying to incorporate some sculpting into a piece of wall art. I used fast drying paper mache (very fast) that I picked up in the craft store. It definitely did the trick but I wouldn't recommend it for trying to get a lot of detailing. It wound up being pretty sticky. It did create a great base and I love the texture of it.



Then I went over with some acrylic paints and gesso.





I also added some real feathers on the raised up areas and then went over them with a bit of puffy paint to bring out the texture of the feathers since it was kind of lost under the coat of gesso.







And the most gorgeous thing, "pouring medium"! That's what it looks like when it's dry!



Of course this was my downfall for a bit. The medium spread way more than I anticipated and so I had a huge thing of black on my canvas now and I seriously had a mental block about it for a couple of weeks. But then a good friend told me I should just start painting over it. I really didn't want to, but she was right. I put a layer of acrylic paint over it and the matte effect it had definitely helped to mitigate the huge expanse of shiny black.

So here is the final product. Et voila