Scylla's Studio: Cartonnage Tutorial: "Happy Jay"

A Cartonnage Bird

Scylla’s Version of Cartonnage

The key materials are brown paper, an armature, and a quick-drying glue.

The paper I prefer is a long-fiber, wood-pulp type that is fairly thick and has good tensile strength. This kind of paper is often used for market bags or wrapping parcels for mailing. My favorite glue is "Modge Podge", a water-based, acrylic glue used for decoupage. This glue dries in minutes, and remains clear and slightly flexible when dry.

For this demonstration project, I use an empty hen's eggshell for the armature.

The Armature

The eggshell is easily glued back together, and the shell is made stronger with several layers of newsprint laminated with the same acrylic glue. This provides a strong base, so that other layers of laminated paper can be added, eventually building up a very sturdy, lightweight, structure.

Creating a Pattern

This is the pattern for the bird I constructed for this tutorial. I create patterns piece-by-piece for each new project. I draw the form, and cut a sample piece from a single sheet of heavy paper. If it appears to fit the structure I'm creating, I then reproduce the form in thin cardboard to use as a cutting template. What you see above are the cutting templates for most of the parts of "Happy Jay".

This particular construction process requires multiple layers of laminated, glued paper, applied in a certain order. It is a bit like building an onion, you must work from the center out to the final layers. Each new layer must be formed to fit the layer before while the material is still damp, so it is a slow process of several days for each piece.

In the image above, four sheet of paper are cut to size for a beak section, and the outline of the beak has been traced onto the top sheet.

For a beak, or other free-standing element, I would use 4 or 5 layers of paper. For an element like the "nape" I use 3 layers since it will be supported by other pieces. Legs and feet were constructed from 6 layers of paper to be strong enough to bear the weight of the completed bird.

It is best to start with small projects till you become accustomed to the speed that the glue dries. Once dry, the glued paper is not flexible enough to be bent and formed into curves to fit earlier layers.

Building a Layer

5 layers of paper have been laminated with glue, and the bubbles have been squeezed out of the piece by scraping with the putty knife. The pattern has been traced on to the final layer (before gluing), so there is no delay in cutting and shaping the form (so the glue doesn't dry before you are ready).

I have a very sharp, precision scissors that I use to quickly cut out the pattern piece. Because the egg is round, you must snip a "pie" design into the beak to ease the 2-dimensional piece to fit the egg curve. As soon as I have bent the still-damp beak piece to fit the egg, I use the same glue to attach it to the curve.

Forming and Adding Elements

The upper and lower beak pieces have been added, and small, torn bits of paper have been brushed with glue and will be used to secure the beak to the egg.

The next task is adding the eyes to create the expression of the face. Once the eyes are in place, the front panel of the "crest" should be added. Like the beak, the crest is cut from laminated sheets of glued paper and bent into a curve to fit the egg while the glue is still damp. The eyes of this bird are constructed of split-pea halves, with eyelids of applied strips of cartonnage scrap.

Paper is a fiber product, like cloth. When wet with glue, the fibers expand and the paper is flexible, even somewhat stretchy, and can be gently pulled and pressed with the fingertips into 3-dimensional curves and forms. The beak, crest, wings and feather layers shown in these images have all be formed in this manner. Extreme curves may require "pie" cuts to allow the paper to bend.

Layering Elements

Thought must be given to as to which body part will overlap another when assembling your bird. In this case, the beak, crest and eyes need to be applied before any of the wing sections.

The main wing layers have been added, using the "pie" cut to ease the curves. Two tail feather layers have been added. These elements have been glued to the egg, and the joins reinforced with scraps of torn, glued paper. When the glue is dry and the parts secure, you may want to paint the crest and any other areas that may be hard to reach after further layers are added. Before painting any element, it is best to prime it with a layer of the glue/acrylic matte medium. This preserves the paper and prepares for a paint layer.

Overlapping Layers

At this point layers must be formed over existing layers, so that the wet paper of each new piece can bend and mould to the shape of layers beneath. The "shoulder feather" elements (2) have been formed over the lower primary wings, allowed to dry and then painted. When dried, these two elements were held in place temporarily with removable tape so the "nape feather" element could be formed over them. Once these 3 elements are dried and painted, they can be glued in place.

The "nape feather" element was originally one piece, but was cut into two in order to overlap both the nape area and the "shoulder feather" elements. Cuts such as this can be blended in smoothly with bits of torn, glued paper and then repainted. Note that the crest has been completed with a back section (the same pattern piece is used twice), and additional feathers added to the tail.

Legs to Stand On

At this point, the bird is fully assembled and painted except for his feet and underside. The template for his feet is very simple, the tricks are, to laminate enough layers of paper that they will be strong when dry; and to carefully bend the toes in an arch while wet (avoid folding the toes if you want strong support!); carefully bend the shank of the leg into a channel*. The back toe is a separate piece cut from the same thick cartonnage as the foot. It should be ½ the length as the lower leg, plus enough for a back toe. *Note that when the lower leg was formed, the shank section was carefully bent into a tight curve; this leaves a groove in which to glue the shank of the back toe.

Below are a single hock section, an assembled foot, and in back, an assembled foot roughly joined to a hock section. Please note, I did not intend to crease the toe on the foot (bottom right) shown here. That was an accident, and reduces the strength of the toe. Toes should be formed like the foot at left rear, with a nice, gentle curve.

You can see the back-toe shank in the channel of the lower leg. The upper leg (hock) will be inserted in this channel to complete the leg. The diamond-shaped bit was reinforcement, to connect the back toe to the front toes and provide more strength.

The feet and leg components should be assembled and attached to the bird near the end, after the bird is fully assembled. This allows you to attach the legs in such a way as to be sure the bird can balance and not tip over. This activity is trial-and-error; I first attach the legs using a temporary adhesive, which will allow me to remove and reposition the legs as needed to get the right fit and balance before fixing them permanently.

Finishing details are now added, such as neck and breast feathers. The breast feathers will overlap the areas where the legs attach, blending them in, and the lower neck feathers will overlap the breast feathers to create realistic surface.

Forming Feathers

Feathers are more easily managed if you make them as a group rather than individually. The image below shows a feather template, the three layers of paper to be laminated, and the finished feather discs. Depending on your patience (or level of insanity), you can make many, many, graduated, layers of feathers for a very lifelike effect. For purposes of this tutorial I only used two feather templates, one for small neck feathers and one for the breast feathers.

Below are finished feather discs that have been painted with several layers of acrylic craft paints and a finish coat of Modge Podge. In the forefront are a few individual feathers, which have been clipped into a fringe to more closely duplicate the texture of feathers. These too were applied in layers, overlapping like fish scales.