The Dogs of Papier Mache

        

    The photo is of a whippet sculpture, made by my friend and frequent commentator on this blog, Madwippit, aka author Karen Bush.  (Not only an author, but an expert horsewoman and riding teacher, a dog-trainer, and now we see, also a pretty nifty sculptress.)

         Karen says:

Karen Bush

Here's a picture of a papier mache greyhound I made of Maxi for her owner, who won it in a charity auction.

           Karen sent me the photo because of my post last week, about my persistent brain-worm that pestered me to make a Green Man mask.  I woke up with the idea in my head of making one out of papier-mache – I suppose simply because we used to make paper-mache things when we were kids.  I seem to remember the older of my brothers setting out to make a brontosaurus (he was mad about dinosaurs).  The thing ended up looking more like a cat, so he painted it black and called it 'Tiddles.'

          Karen has knowledgeable tips about papier-mache (as well as horse-riding on a budget, and planting dog-friendly gardens.)  She says:

          It's fun - have a go. It's also cheap - newspaper torn (not cut) into strips is perfect (tissue paper is good for the finishing layers) - wallpaper paste is easy to use and keeps for weeks and weeks - make up a small batch and keep it in a tupperware type container with a lid. If you want to sculpt more you can make your own papier mache pulp but it's a bit of a faff and much easier to buy it in dried form which you add water to - use an electric hand mixer to whizz it and add some PVA glue to make it a little more plastic and stop it from drying too quickly. The pulp sets like rock when it's dry. I prefer using just newspaper, but pulp is handy for detail like toes or the coats of shaggy dogs.

          Look forward to seeing your Green (Wo)Man! 

                   Karen :-)

          This is quite encouraging.  I can feel the call of papier-mache pulp and PVA.  But I must resist!  I have the Sterkarm book to finish; I have an outline to work up for my agent (which I haven’t even starting thinking about, but which I have Davy researching.  That is, he's reading a book he wanted to read anyway, and reporting back to me on it.)  And next week it’s the Scattered Authors' Society's four-day conference, and I haven’t even started to begin to think about organising myself for it…

         But just look at that lovely whippet.  Could I make something as good as that?  Could I?

         If you want to see more whippets, have a look at Karen's blog here. 

         And if you're interested in ghostly Black Dogs, you might like my contribution to Lucy Coats' Fantabulous Fridays blog here.


         And a review of mine is up on the Awfully Big Blog Adventure's review wing here.