Lots of progress!

    I had a good day yesterday, working about 5 hours on the carving.  I finished the texturing/burning on the wings; put in the glass eyes; finished burning the feathers around the eyes and beak; and attached the feet.  The latter job involved putting a ring of epoxy clay around the wire protruding from the upper part of each foot, and pressing the foot into place against the wooden stump.  The epoxy squeezed out, which is what I wanted to happen, to make sure that the gap between the two parts was filled with epoxy.  It dried fast, and I removed the excess and worked a little with two different power carving tips to blend the texturing over the transition point and obscure it even more.  Below are some photos I took this morning out on the picnic table, in 88-degree heat.

    In preparation for the next step, I have begun reading once again the second half of Al Jordan's book on creating a half-size osprey carving.  Lots of info there on painting, with a complete color palette.  I have all the colors already.  One difficult part will be transferring his painting instructions for a sitting osprey with wings folded to a diving osprey with wings extended.  The sitting osprey has less of the undersides of the wings exposed than my carving, so I will just have to extrapolate his color schemes to the extended wings.  I have plenty of photos to rely on, as well.  My final choices will be a combination of what is in the book and what I see in my collection of osprey photographs.  The author makes a point for artistic license himself, since ospreys all look a little different.  No one can say I'm wrong.

    Next step: sealing the carving with sanding sealer, and applying several coats of thinned-out gesso.  This will produce a uniform white base all over the carving, in advance of applying the colors.

    Five hours yesterday brings my total to 107.5 hours, rounded off to 108.  I don't think the painting will take another 100 hours, so my initial estimate of 200 hours for this carving was way too high.

    BTW, I did a full mockup of my idea for mounting the carving, with a curved metal rod supporting the carving above a base.  Didn't work.  The carving was too heavy for the 1/8" steel rod, especially with the curve, and the carving would not stay up.  I feel that I must do what I didn't want to do, which is support the carving with a vertical rod from the belly down to the base.  Oh, well.