Quails & Foam & Feathers

We've made progress on our quails!

This past week we worked ever so slowly and patiently on building cardboard armatures and covering them in Great Stuff insulation foam.

That's not true. Actually, we quickly constructed cardboard armatures bound with tape and other studio waste and took them to the sculpture spray booth, which is actually a chilly wind tunnel, and covered them with around 40 cans of foam. It was a a slow, but not so patient process (on my part) that ultimately produced two large blobs loosely based on two of the quails from the Ruby Back Plate with Quails and Chrysanthemums that our project is referencing. 
I've developed more congenial feelings for them since they're out of the spray booth. 

Our quail armatures fresh from the spray booth.

After a little deliberation over feather type and direction, we started hand tearing white and a little cream colored paper to create the feathers for the quails.

Paper feathers and YES! PASTE 

We're using YES! PASTE as our glue to stick the paper feathers to the foam. I'm not entirely sure if the name of this product is fully capitalized, but it is in my heart and this post. 

I've designated this paragraph for discussing the many benefits of  YES! PASTE. Right off the bat, this is the most affirming glue I've encountered. How many products seem to actively want you to believe in yourself and your work? I can only count a few, but this one is by far my favorite. Besides the affirmative label, this paste is archival, dries matte and clear, and has a thick body. We can dip our paper feathers into the tub and stick them directly on the foam. Our lives are constantly made better by YES! PASTE. 

Beginning stages of foam with paper feathers

We've spent the last couple of days tearing feathers and applying them to our foam armatures. It's a slow process, but we're really enjoying it. This component of our project has been a nice deviation from the labor intensive process of measuring, masking, and painting wall paper. I think we're both feeling excited by the progress the quails have undergone during the last two days and are looking forward to experiencing them totally covered in paper feathers. 

If you happen to think of us during your day, know we're probably (hopefully merrily) applying little bits of torn paper to large foam forms.