The Long Tongued Gossip

Now that the Miss H project is finally finished I can focus all my attention to blogging the Cagebirds project, our 2nd major design project, which I spoke about in my first post. There are 8 characters to design for, each with very specific characteristics. The one I'm looking at here is called The Long-Tongued Gossip and, as the name suggests, she is a gossip. As the play is called Cagebirds it made sense to me to use birds as an inspiration.

For this character I chose to use a Black Palm Cockatoo as a base for a design because it is a bird that is capable of speech or mimicry, which is all gossip is. It also lent itself to a very strong punky or gothic approach to make her stand out and to give her the appearance of being slightly sinister and prickly.

After reading through the text and creating a sort of character profile for each of the 8 ladies or 'birds' I started looking at body poses, getting my friend Lizzie to pose for a series of quick drawings.

 The quick drawing that best embodies The Gossip.

 First design - Acrylic painting of The Gossip and a Black Palm Cockatoo

Final Design - Watercolour pencil, pencil and chalk drawing

Side and Back View Drawing - Marker pen and watercolour pencil drawing.

I liked the idea of her having Killer heels and the Cockatoos plumage has become a huge feature of the design , being more of a representation of the plumage rather than a complete copy of it. The black and red lends itself really well to this secretive, slightly vindictive character and makes her seem sinister and scary in a way. 

I'll keep posting up the character developments as they come,

 TA for looking

Sal XX

If you'd decided not to marry, you'd have saved yourself a lot of heartache...

... And you would've saved me a lot of trouble too!

My dress for Miss Havisham is finally done, apart from a little beading which I plan to do sat watching a film later on today. As my first ever period piece I am rather proud of it, but after all the problems it's given me, I am so very glad to be done with it. Hand in is next week and I'm pretty confident it'll get me a good mark. Well, I hope it will anyway.

It has taken me over 50 hours to create - if you count the many hours pattern cutting, fitting and altering toiles and the few hours it took me to stop crying when I sewed my sleeve on upside down and has cost about £40-50 altogether. But I think it was all well worth it eventually, as it looks pretty much just as I'd hoped in my design

 Final Dress - Full length with train.

 Final Dress - Detail of appliquéd waistband.

Final Design - Aged Character in Watercolours

Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed that it passes :-) and on to the next project...

Ta for looking,

Sal XX