Halfland Puppets: Handicapped Butterflies

I always envisioned Halfland's Handicapped Butterflies as beautiful and winsome creatures with exquisite wings and clearly human bodies. They are called handicapped because their forms would be misshapen, deformed, or disabled in some obvious way, not to be crass or insensitive. I wanted them to make an elegant statement as they silently flew past us in the garden that while their human bodies may be impaired, it didn't matter at all because they were quite gracefully able to fly. My point was that a hampered body need not make one useless or of no consequence. As a matter of fact, in Halfland such things are perfectly accepted as part of normal wonderful life.

 

 I used hyper lightweight air dry fluffy clay mixed to a light flesh color. It took me and Constance a while to get the hang of how to sculpt such a small figure. I was after the impressionistic style of form that my friend Ronda was known for in her ceramics (see the vase she made for me in the middle behind the foam block, the one with women sitting around the top.) I found the best way for me was to make the bodies in sections; legs, torso, heads and arms, that would be attached with 34 guage wire after they cured the next day. Minute details like vertebrae, calf muscles, knees, elbows, nipples, heels, etc. were added under magnifier with small brush and Omnigel.

 Constance delved into Google to find us a selection of butterfly wings that we printed out to scale. I used Omnigel coated wax paper as their material and traced their patterns in pastel chalks and flocking powders.

 

When I finally paired each finished nude human body with each finished set of wings I was disappointed that they looked too much like fairies, which wasn't what I was after at all. I wanted a more Fine Art, serious result and these were coming out pretty cutesy-pie. Frustrated, I went back in with a vengeance with a blade and hacked them all into slimmer limbs and smaller faces. I glued legs together and flocked their bodies in an effort to make them cross back over into being more insect-like in the bodies. Added and hand striped my finest wire as antenna, which photographs as still too thick.

I'd say that only 2 or 3 survived the make-over as viable characters. I set them on Carol's stunningly lovely finished Teacup Rose trellis on set to see if that helped their effect somewhat. Still not sure.

I did my absolute best with them, although I'm not sure I succeeded.  I learned a lot about sculpting tiny figures and am much more adept at it after this experience. While I'm proud of the success of such tiny sculpts in general, I'm not sure they are up to snuff for the film.

I made them so small that I wonder if the effect I wanted would even be possible at this size. I spent so many hours making these over the last two weeks that I have to declare them all done at this scale for now, try them for distant shots in the garden, and may end up trying to make them again, larger for close-ups, after everything else is done.