Puppet Up

Just back from Edinburgh Art College puppet making summer school with David Wilcox. Fabulous! Made puppets all day and partied all night. My ideal life style. David dropped us in the deep end by presenting us with a paper bag and telling us to get on with it. Guess which one is mine?

From there we graduated to a more sophisticated rod puppet than I have made before. David was superbly well organised with everything cut, drilled and ready to roll. After assembling the skeleton I didn't get much beyond modeling the head which is a polystyrene ball with brown paper features covered in gloving leather and PVA. The leather I have had for a million years. Sending for a bag of leather off cuts seemed like SUCH a good idea at the time. Apart from smelling it occasionally, the leather and I haven't had much creative interface over the years, until now. Attempted cardboard hands with the idea of covering them with leather too but feel they are a bit clumsy. Progressing this guy is on the to do list.....but don't hold your breath.

The star of the show was definitely the muppet. David had lots of fleece and fluff with which to cover our muppets but I don't do cuddly. I had taken along an old piece of PVC raincoat materials picked up for a couple of quid another thousand years ago and it was ideal. A lot tougher than it looks. You can sew and pull it about pretty relentlessly.

We started with a modeling technique I hadn't come across before, foam and latex (Copydex). If you paint the edges of foam you want to join and leave it for an hour, it becomes self ahesive. Stick it together and leave it overnight and it's forever.

To be continued in next post. Blogger is being stroppy about uploading photos...