Scott and his djembe

Each holiday season I try to make a gift for a loved one.  For years I've been wanting to make a djembe piece for my brother, Scott, who plays the djembe and has a music room in his house with just about every kind of musical thing you can think of - everything from a melodica (which I used to play) to an organ.

Early in 2019 I came across step-by-step instructions for drawing and painting wings. I decided to take those instructions and see how they would translate to collaged feathers. It was one of those moments when the whole picture came together in my mind, and the first time I sketched it on a piece of paper it looked pretty darn close to what I had pictured.

Well.... Sort of.

This is one the early sketches, which is a perfect example of how things don't look right for me until they're on fabric or wood. Also, I drew about ten of these sketches, all while in the middle of doing something else, like work. It's a wonder I get anything done.

So in August I bought the wooden canvas and went for it.  The first thing I did, after painting the canvas and sketching the image, was cut about a thousand feathers out of chocolate, tea, and perfume boxes.  Thankfully, the step-by-step wing-making guide worked really well.  The wings looked absolutely terrible after the first layer so I didn't take a picture. It took everything I had to keep going because of how awful it looked.  I told Robert this was going to be a tweezer piece, and it really was. I used two sets of tweezers for the wings and my brother's image, swapping them out whenever they gummed up.  It was meditative work, and occasionally I would stop and cuss for awhile before moving on.  

I gathered up all my favorite white paper scraps, painted them blue, white, and gray, and then tore them up for the sky.  The sky was my favorite thing to make. 

Here is just one of two towers of paper scraps.  

It took some time, but they're all sorted by color and type. Looking for white paper scraps was a little like trying to find the needle in the haystack, and it definitely helped me organize my scraps for future projects.

For the clouds I used this homemade, stringy floral paper I've been saving for a special occasion. I bought a giant box of super fancy paper scraps for $5 at Scraps KC, and have been waiting for the right project to dig into the box.

This is the box: 

 

Scott's shirt is an Arizona map I found in the donations bin at the library.  I tried to find a bunch of special places and refrained from the goofy-sounding places because I can adult some times. Also, there isn't a buttface, AZ, so that helped in the maturity department.   

Scott's shorts are the packaging from one of Rachel's go-to peppermint teas and surprisingly, the toughest paper to figure out.  Rachel saves her tea packaging at home, but I nearly lost my shit when she brought home a bag of scraps about halfway through the semester. It was one of the most thoughtful things she's ever done.

I have to mention another special thing about this piece. I've always collaged standing up, with the piece flat on a table. It was a lot of hunkering over, and with a back injury I realized I could no longer collage this way.  I brought out an easel my dad found at a thrift store and gave me years ago, and decided to try it out.  It's been working beautifully and I won't be going back to the old method ever again.  

So there's a lot of love, memories, and sacred time in this piece.  I was pretty much finished with it by Scott's wedding, but I waited to start the layers and layers of mod podge until I could put in a tiny piece of paper from their wedding. I nearly spontaneously combusted from glee when I glued that piece down.

Over the holidays we facetimed each other to open presents. Here are a couple shots I snapped of Scott opening it.