-

Seagulls

Can't forget the styrofoam, I am making some foam seagulls - flying ones to hang with clear fishing line and sitting ones for the mast and gunwales. Be sure to see my foam page for some basic instructions on how to cut and glue foam.

I would recommend you make a pattern out of a piece of poster board, then you can trace out LOTS of seagulls. You can use the grid method to draw out the seagull parts. If you slept through high school art class, here's how the grid method works; draw a grid on your poster board, 12 squares wide and 7 squares tall. If you want, you can label the squares A-L across the top and 1-7 down the side. Start with the top left square (A1) and just draw what's in that square. Then draw B1, C1, etc until you are finished. The size of squares you start with will determine how big your seagull will be. I used 1 1/2 inch squares, my seagulls are 18 inches long. If you use 1 inch squares you will have 12 inch long seagulls.

Cut out your poster board template and use it to trace out seagulls on foam, you'll need one body and two wings for each gull. Because I was making big seagulls and I had some 4 inch foam, I cut the bodies from 4 inch foam and the wings from 1 inch foam. You could cut two bodies from 2 inch foam for each bird and stick them together to make a 4 inch body. Cut the pieces out with a heated wire cutter.

I would usually use the heated wire cutter to round the egdes of the wings and the seagull's head (see "sculpting" on my foam page) but I did something a little different this time. There is a tool made by Stanley called a SurForm Shaver.


It is a handle with a cheese grater-like rasp on it for less than $10. In about 5 minutes (outside!) you can round off all the edges and make your gull look quite lifelike. You can also sculpt it with a hot wire cutter or heated knife if you want.

The reason I don't often use this tool is because it leaves the foam rough and difficult to paint. But on these birds, the rough texture looks like feathers and I won't paint most of it because it's already white.

There are lots of species of gulls with different coloration, I patterned mine after the Common Gull. With latex or acrylic craft paint, paint the wings grey, the tail black, and the beak yellow. After the paint is dry, dampen the foam with a little water and glue the wings on with a little Gorilla Glue (the water causes a chemical reaction to set the Gorilla Glue) Use toothpicks to pin the wings on, push the picks in so they are below the surface of the foam and leave them in. Use a piece of wooden dowel as the legs; you can drill a hole in the mast crossbeams or gunwales to set your gulls in. Some can have short dowels so they look like they are sitting, others can have long dowels to look like they are standing. You can also set some dowels in a little container of plaster of Paris if you want to set some seagulls on the stage floor, piano, etc. Seagull legs are a dusty pink if you want to paint the dowels. I used large yellow scrapbooking brads with a black marker dot for the eyes, you can use yellow paint if you want.

Up next - flying gulls


I made these with 1 inch foam for the wings and 4 inch foam for the body (or two pieces of 2 inch foam. I drew my pattern out on a 1 1/2 inch grid to made a seagull 18 inches long with a 4 foot wingspan. Trace one half of the wing then flip the pattern over and trace the other half, making one wing piece 4 feet long.

Again, I used the SurForm tool to round out the body. I rounded off the front of the wings and tapered off the back of the wings so that the cross section of the wing looked something like this:

I used Gorilla Glue and toothpicks to attach the wings to the body. Paint is black wing tips above and below, black tail above and below, and the rest is left white, including the underside of the wings. I painted dusty pink legs and feet to the bottom of the body. If you use just one string to hang your bird it is hard to get it to hang right, so I will attach 4 pieces of clear fishing line to front, back and wings of the gull. Then it will hang exactly how I want - it can be climbing or diving, I can raise one wing and lower the other to look like it's turning. Caution, the wings are long and somethat fragile. Be careful when transporting and hanging.

Posted 2/1/10
Updated 6/17/10