First "draft" of feet (revised)

    I met with my friends in the local Southern Maine Wood Carving Guild this afternoon, at Rockler's near the Maine Mall.  Instead of working on a wood carving, I chose to sculpt some feet for my osprey carving out of epoxy clay over a wire armature.  The group agreed that it was OK for me to work with something other than wood for this meeting.  Actually, they didn't care what I was working on, as long as I was doing something creative!

    I had already twisted four strands of aluminum wire together to form the parts of the foot and toes, so I was ready to go with respect to fleshing out the foot.  I also already used some epoxy clay to make a collection of scale-size claws.  I had rolled out the clay into narrow cone shapes, cut off the ends, bent them around a dowel, and let them dry overnight.  Below is part of the collection of claws, with a pencil for reference.  The epoxy clay became sufficiently hard to preserve the very sharp ends.  I made more than enough, in case some broke, bent, or were otherwise damaged.

    At the meeting this afternoon, I mixed small batches of clay and formed it around the upper part of each foot, locking the twisted wire in place.  This is a good point to insert a short discussion of avian leg anatomy. The osprey's toes are indeed its toes, but they are connected to a long bone (the tarsometarsus) that looks like a shin but really is the fused tarsal and metatarsal bones of the bird's foot.  Imagine that you are standing on your toes and imagine that the bones in your foot between your toes and your heel are elongated and fused together into a single bone.  This bone, the tarsometatarsus, is thin but strong, and is usually covered with scales.  Some birds, however, such as owls, have feathers on the tarsometarsus extending all the way down to the toes.  The twisted wire armature around which I applied epoxy clay therefore corresponds to the tarsometatarsus.

    Similarly, in a bird, what corresponds to our actual shin bone is called the tibiotarsus, a bone comprised of the tibia (which we have) fused with the two tarsal bones (talus and calcareous) that form our heel and the joint between the tibia and the foot.  A bird's ankle is not quite in the same place as ours, since the end of the tibiotarsus articulates with the proximal end of the tarsometatarsus.  Our ankle is the end of the tibia itself articulating with the calcaneous bone in the foot.  Birds do have a fibula, the smaller of the two bones in the lower leg, but it is short, splintery, and doesn't reach all the way to the ankle.  The image below of the bones in a typical bird leg should provide a visual explanation of what I have been trying to describe.

    The osprey's heel, then, is actually near the point where the feathered part of the lower leg (tibiotarsus) ends and the scaly part (tarsometatarsus) begins.  That's why a chickadee’s skinny little legs may look like they have a knee that bends backwards.  It is not the knee you're seeing, but the heel.  The knees of a bird's legs are usually covered up by the contour feathers on the sides of the body. 

    My carving so far has stumps for legs, and the ends of these stumps represent the approximate location of the heel joint between the tibiotarsus and the tarsometatarsus.  You will see what I mean in the pictures below.

    Mixing the clay in small batches again, I made the toes, which on the carving are about one inch long.  Since this is a half-sized carving, imagine the toes being about as long as your little finger.  I used my sculpting tools to add pads to the bottoms of the toes, and scales to the upper surfaces,  I then pressed into the end of each of the toes one of the pre-made claws, and formed the clay around it.  I could make about two toes before the epoxy clay became too hard to use.  I then mixed more, and did a couple more toes.

    I was able to finish this rough draft of the feet during the three-hour carving club meeting, and brought them home.  The next step was to determine the actual length of the feet, based on the plans I have, and I needed to cut away some of the hardened clay at the top of the foot to get the lengths correct.  I drilled holes in the "stumps" of the carving, and inserted the exposed ends of the twisted wire armatures into the holes and - to my surprise and satisfaction - the result actually looked something like extended osprey feet!

    The photos above were set up in a hurry, because I was excited about how the feet looked, so the lighting isn't great, but I think you can see where the process is going, even though it looks cartoonish at the moment.  I will add more clay bulk to the upper part of the foot where it makes contact with the wood, and then carve the whole leg assembly to produce a smooth transition in size and shape along the leg.  I will also bend the wire armature a little to suggest a slight flexure at the heel, which I have seen in photos.  This will eliminate the appearance of perfectly straight legs, which are seen in some of my reference photos of real ospreys but which might look a little artificial on a carving.  The epoxy clay I chose for the feet has the consistency of wood when it hardens, so it can be carved, sanded, detailed, etc., just like the real wood of the body and upper legs.

    I may fiddle a little bit with the configuration of the toes, to give an appearance closer to the "two toes forward, two toes back" appearance of the feet that I have seen in my reference photo collection.  At the moment, one of the feet has the four toes at nearly right angles to each other, forming a square cross, which is not quite correct.  I will also shorten the tarsometatarsus, because my reference photos of diving ospreys show that the bases of the toes is just below the tip of the beak.  My first draft legs are a little longer than this, and I can easily cut them back.

    In the photos above, you may also see some reference lines I have drawn on the head, to help me carve the shape of the head, the border between the head and the beak, and the small crest behind the head, and keep everything symmetrical while doing it.  Also marked is the position of the eyes; two pairs of 7 mm yellow arrived in the mail this week and I can't wait to set them in place after I shape the head and detail the head feathers.  I have done a little shaping of the head over the past few days, using my hand carving tools rather that power tools.  I did this mostly because it was too hot and humid to sit outside on the picnic bench in the morning or afternoon sun.

    I will not permanently attach the feet until the carving is ready to be mounted on its base (whatever that might look like), for fear of damaging the toes and the rather delicate claws.  When the feet are completed, I will post a few photos of them in place, then remove the feet and finish the rest of the bird.  The feet will be glued in place only for the final steps in the painting process.

    Counting the time spent making the claws and armatures, the time spent on shaping the head, and the time spent at today's carving group, the running total is now up to about 63 hours.