Soiled Dove Puppet

This puppet is made of Yupo, with Yupo Octopus for the dress. The dress is three pieces: dress, neck ruffle and sleeve ruffles. The Octopus has a smooth top surface that allows for fine detail. I drew with Prismacolor marker and Sharpie. The back of Octopus is the adhesive quality of micro suction cups. The clothes stick to the puppet like magic.

Not the clearest photo here, but it shows the puppet undressed. You can see the structure of her body. This soiled dove is made of a rigid sheet of Yupo fused to the Octopus. This way, all the pieces are sticky on the back and there is no hardware for the joints. This gal ended up getting smaller hands. I also am doing test shots to see what backgrounds I like. The green floral here softens the overall look.

This is a mat of weeded, cut puppet pieces for my puppet.
There are right and left multiple hands with varying gestures. The weird poofy shapes will be feathered trim for her hat.

Although it was nice to avoid eyelets and brads, moving the pieces around was laborious. As my ultimate goal is to have her move, I decided to go back to hardware. She is much easier to handle when she is together.

Through my research, I found a technique where the puppet is jointed with the eyelet and brad method, but the top layer has no holes, covering the top of the brad, giving a smooth look. I am going to try this.

Paper Puppets: Mermaid

Mermaid Puppet, paper, stencil board, mini brads, prismacolor, Sharpie marker

PAPER PUPPETS: Mermaid

Articulated paper figures have been called puppets, maquettes, pantins or dolls. I research, modify and perfect my designs to make them durable, movable and creative. I love to make things move. She has nice little wiggle in her middle.

Although I find this a very successful first attempt, I felt the neck was too short.

Mermaid Puppet, detail

The Mermaid.

The Mermaid is my original blank design cut from oiled stencil board and white cardstock. I cut each piece three times.

Once for the white card, twice for the stencil board.

The stencil board is glued together. When dry, it is finished with layer of white card stock, ready to be drawn upon. Once the layered pieces are dry, they are illustrated. Each part is hand-drawn with Prismacolor pencils and Sharpie markers.

The illustrated pieces are layed out and assembled, using tiny brads to form joints so that the puppets can move.

STENCIL BOARD

An old-fashioned board that is fortunately still made. It has changed little over time. Stencil Board is a material used by "old school" sign painters. It is meant to repel inks and paints. It is a card saturated with Linseed Oil and baked. Often three times.

It is a beautiful, durable, crisp board that is very thin and strong. It has a lovely, earthy, mottled complextion and when freshly ordered one can actually smell the Linseed Oil. Stencil board is not generally or popularly used in puppet making or paper arts, but it should be. It is so versatile if you know how to handle it.

I prefer it over chipboard because of it's sharpness and strength despite how thin it is. This is especially attractive to movable projects such as puppets.