King Puppet
We love rewatching "The Owl House", and decided to recreate one of our favourite characters into a puppet, so we can have more adventures in our therapy room or at home. Puppets are a fun way to help us play out different scenarios that happen in our everyday, or from our dreams, or help us explore different social situations. Or to relive our favourite moments from our favourite tv shows.
STEP ONE
Gather all your materials, this art activity takes a long time, for each part to dry and then reworked on, we spread it out over a week to get finished after work. There is a free PDF for a more detailed guide. You'll need PVA glue, scissors, tissue paper, image for reference, brushes, newspapers, masking tape, coloured paper, acrylic paints, recycled carton, and lots of time.
Now start by drawing your favourite character, we have chosen King from "The Owl House", so we looked on Google for reference images, looking at the shape of his head, his details and features. Then we started by cutting the end of the carton out (after it's been washed and dried), keep the cut bottom and cut this again (1/4 off), then 1/3 down from top of carton we cut part way around, leaving an 1.5 inch at the back, add tape to this part for extra support.
STEP TWO
Place the larger cut bottom carton piece into the top portion of the carton, and secure with masking tape, this will be your puppets top palette in their mouth, a place for your fingers to go in. Once your are happy with the movement your puppet makes with your hand inside, then you can start gathering news paper and more masking tape to begin moulding and sculpting your puppet.
STEP THREE
Take your time sculpting and moulding your puppet, using as much masking tape as you want to secure pieces in place. Using your hands and fingers to shape out the features. Keep in mind the top part of the face is the opening to your puppets mouth, picture building the head around the opening as the puppets lips.
We decided to build King in stages, to allow each part time to dry. When you're happy with your puppet it'll be time to add tissue paper, so gather those materials now.
STEP FOUR
Now it's time to add the different tissue papers, layer the colours by brushing the PVA mixture over them and onto the puppet, these will be a base for your puppet, be mindful of the joints, or places there will be movements. This part took the longest, slowly adding details and colours. Then when the top of the head was dry we worked on the bottom portion or jawline, making sure to repeat the earlier steps.
Once the puppet is covered, we decided to add more finer details by adding acrylic paint, taking our time to add finer details like eyes, facial expressions or contours around the horns. Once dry you can make any accessories your puppet might need.