Give me a Paw

Or two, or three, or a dozen...

I've been shoveling out the studio in preparation for the next phase of this project. It's been so cluttered with the remnants of previous paw attempts that I have a hard time coping with being in there. I've lost count of how many paw attempts I've actually made over the past couple of years, and as I cleaned, I figured I would count.  Here goes.

Attempt One!

Attempt one.  I came up with this version by enlarging and tracing top, bottom, and side views of an illustration of a paw onto a large piece of paper, cutting the tracings out, then transferring them onto foam. I then cut out the foam pieces and glued them together to make this paw. I never taped it up and made a pattern from it, as at this time I couldn't figure out how I'd pattern  the area in between the toes. I did come back to this technique later on.

Attempt Two!

​Let's call the above Attempt 2a. This paw was made from the pattern I got from sculpting a foot out of clay, taping it up, and enlarging the tape pattern to the correct size. (more here: http://www.sanssoucistudios.com/blog/onto-bigger-things) I believed I might better understand how to pattern in between the toes if I did this.

I'm looking at that seam across the knuckles, running higglety pigglety every which way, and wondering what the hell was I thinking?? Maybe that it might suggest different ways to approach that area, and to try them out on different parts of the paw? But it sure is a screaming mess.

This one we'll call Attempt 2b, an attempt at neatening up the seams from 2a. The seams across the knuckles are  ugly but at least they're consistent. This is also the only pattern where I ran a seam down the center of the underside of each toe. Future attempts would move the seams into a less visible spot along the sides of the toes. (I'm not sure I should letting these pictures see the light of day...)

Attempt Three!

From this point forward I was building paws out of foam and making patterns from them. The above, my first such attempt. Reconstructing my thought process here,  I made the fingers like tubes and the toebeans like plugs in the ends, as I could imagine how I'd tape up such an arrangement. You can also see how I changed the seams on the fingers from one central seam underneath to two more or less parallel seams on the top, where they blend in better with the overall design.  More here: http://www.sanssoucistudios.com/blog/feet-of-foam  

Attempt Four!!

Here I played more (a lot more!) with building up detail in the foam. The finger tubes are still under there, but they have carved  knuckles and joints glued on top of them. I also gave the tubes a bit of a downward bend by cutting out notches on the undersides and gluing the edges together.

Above, mockup from first attempt at a pattern from this foam. We'll call this 4a. 

And, a second attempt from this foam paw and pattern. We'll call this 4b.

​The big difference between 4a and 4b is that 4b has more refined seamlines between the toes and the top and bottom of the hand (compare the green lines).  4b also has shorter toes. In other words, it looks slightly more like a dog's foot and and less like a gecko's. For more:  http://www.sanssoucistudios.com/blog/pause-for-paws  

Attempt Five!!!

Above, the final (ish) foam paw build. I revisited what I did in Attempt One, which is,  I enlarged top, bottom, and side views of an illustration of a paw onto a large piece of paper, traced and cut them out, transferred them onto foam, and then glued them all together. At this point I've also traded in the idea of cylindrical tubes for fingers for that of narrow rectangular boxes, hoping that this would allow the fingers to lie closer together, with less of a splayed appearance. I also did a lot less carving on this paw to keep the angles and edges as sharp and clear as possible.  

Here is the first attempt at a pattern from the above foot, which I shall dub 5a. This is also my is first attempt at translating the tendons into actual fabric. The toebean pattern has also been refined. More here:  http://www.sanssoucistudios.com/blog/getting-out-of-hand 

And, 5b. At some point I must have swapped out the toebeans on this foam paw, as they're noticeably larger here than the ones on 5a.

I made several versions of the pattern, switching from tape to fabric and adhesive spray to be better able to get into all the little nooks and crannies. I also cut apart the resulting paws several times, tweaked them, and used those for patterns for further attempts as well. For more:.  ​http://www.sanssoucistudios.com/blog/frankensteining

Which is what these poor things are, cut apart and tweaked paw attempts that have served as patterns. I think there are three different attempts contained in these four bags. 

OK so let's tote it up!! 1a + 2a + 2b +3a +4a + 4b + 5a + 5b + 3 random extras and.... eleven paw attempts. That's a few!!

​Now to go and get some more work done in my (for the moment anyway) immaculately clean studio!