Whilst the PaperCrafter team love our traditional card making crafts, we thought we’d pick the brains of London-based illustrator Zack Mclaughlin; a colourful and creative artist who has recently taken his love for children’s illustration to creating lifelike 3D birds from all manner of paper materials.
We caught up with the creative whiz to find out more about his strikingly realistic paper sculptures…
“I am a country boy through and through! Growing up in the middle of fields and woods, I would always be out exploring and getting mucky. I could never get enough of finding new bugs, searching ponds for frogs and newts (often falling in), or just looking at all the small details in nature. So much to be in awe of.”
“School was all about art for me. If I could get away with drawing diagrams or jazzing up titles for boring subjects then I would as much as possible. I loved drawing and painting from as young as I can remember, but I never really had any direction for it. I went through school mainly driven by art, but it wasn’t until my third year of university that I managed to find direction and a purpose for my painting. In the third year I came up with my own children’s book, which dealt with my childhood; this book would be the reason I got into paper crafting a few years later.”
“After a couple of self-published books for a few people online, my illustrative career first really began at my end of year degree show. I had my major project on show, Hairy and Scary, which was my children’s book. An empolyee from Dorling Kindersley publishers was there and left their details in my comments book. They managed to get me my first published work — there was a lot of work to do in a short amount of time, but I got to see it on the shelves of major bookstores!”
“My paper crafting and sculpting has been a very recent thing, since October last year. The children’s book I started back at university was one where I was dealing with my troubled childhood and an abusive parent. I really wanted to get the book out in the public eye just so it could help children in a similar predicament. A California-based movie company got in touch as they were interested in the story for a feature length animation and wanted a rough script for it, so I wanted to create some visuals.”
“The story is of a little boy called Milo who lives with an abusive monster, but fashions his own escape, flying over many landscapes and overcoming the horrors the monster had put him though. Initially, it was a plane the boy made out of found materials, but I came up with a bird lantern made out of old paper from books he had found. The lantern would react to his emotions, getting brighter and flying higher when he felt happy and strong, but sinking lower and getting dimmer the sadder he felt.”
I couldn’t visualise painting the lantern, so I made the bird lantern from scratch. It took me a long time and I had never attempted anything like it before — but the result was highly rewarding. Being so used to working in 2D and modelling things to look like they have three dimensions to them, it was extra satisfying to be able to see all of the angles to what I was creating.”
“From there, I started exploring by making more and more realistic-looking birds, using different papers, wires and wood! I am still challenging myself with more elaborate and intricate paper work, and I love it!”
“If you look at nearly all my work, you will see my main inspiration is nature itself. I can’t say enough how amazed I am by it: continuously finding new details, colours and shapes that I just have to recreate. At the moment it is birds that I am inspired by. The sheer variety and beauty out there is a lifetime’s work in itself. Feathers are just beautiful objects; when they’re together on a living bird, spread wide and used in flight, they look simply stunning.”
“I am quite meticulous when it comes to planning out my next design. I believe that if you want to try and do nature justice you must take note of the finer details and get them right. I will spend a long time researching picture upon picture of the subject from every angle so I can get a real sense of the bird. Then, I will draw out the silhouette of the birds body, map out the wings and tail feathers in the correct sizes, shapes and layouts. From there, I work out the individual feathers and set about cutting them all out.”
“It is very time consuming but I never lose sight of the end goal, it really drives me through even the dullest part of the process. I use small hand scissors for all my cutting as I have more control over the smallest of feathers, especially when making all of the fine cuts along the edges of the feathers. On the larger flight feathers, I add a length of thin metal wire for strength and structure.”
“I go about cutting the body out of a block of solid wood then carve and sand it down with a dremmel tool until I am happy with the shape. Tricky parts like the eyes and feet I make out of wire and clay. Once I have finished the finer details, I paint the bird with a small paint brush and acrylic paint. Then, I will add the tail feathers and solid thick wire structures for the wings.”
“Next is the laborious task of placing all of the individually cut out feathers on the wing structures. The whole thing is very therapeutic and I do really enjoy the end result. I will always use paper for the feathers as it lends itself very well to the look and feel of the real thing!”
“I am not a fast worker at all, I am very meticulous and quite a perfectionist as each detail is carefully planned and executed. For this reason, I take just over 100 hours to create an owl. Smaller birds take me around 50 hours… it’s the feathers which are the time consuming part.”
“The main tool for me is my pair of trusty scissors! They are really small, sharp, light and easy to use; perfect for the intricate work I do. The other tool I really couldn’t do without is my electric dremmel rotary tool.”
“I would love to take a few months out and just create as many different birds as I could to be able to fill a huge space, I think It would just be such a rewarding feeling to be able to do that.”
“Also, to finish off my own story I would love to create some paper scenes in large box frames and play with materials for the visuals.”
Favourite meal Full Beef roast dinner with all the trimmings
Other favourite hobbies Swimming, cycling, exploring nature and doing new things.
Top holiday destination New Zealand
Favourite animal Robin redbreast
Favourite colour Sea blue
Make sure you check out Zack’s work over on his website www.zackmclaughlin.com or keep updated on his Facebook and Twitter page.
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