Halloween Wings

For October 31, I wanted to RollerBlade under the full moon light.  Traditionally, I've done this in my billowing black cloak; this worries Mark, who is convinced that I'm going to slip, knock myself out, and get squished by a truck.

This time around, I decided that I would work on white wings, which would show up, and then, in the very unlikely event that I did slip and knock myself out, I would be a white heap in the middle of the road, illuminated by the silvery full moon.   

I started construction on the first of the month.

I thought about how I might make some wings that weren't too horrific looking.  There's a woman on the Internet who made black wings, bird feet, and a beaked full head mask.  I didn't want my head covered because I wanted to be able to see, but her tutorial about how to put together wings from feathers based on actual birds was instructive.  I also thought I might be able to pull off something like the winged costumes used in Akhenaten.   

The first step was to make a small model of the wings in chipboard before cutting out feathers and wings from some sheets of cardboard that we had.  I thought I might be able to make the wings bend at the elbow; this might have worked, except that I didn't have a model arm to fit into the model wing -- so I didn't realize until later that my elbow doesn't bend in the same plane as the wing model did.

Luckily, I had the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Feather Atlas as a resource. The most difficult part was figuring out how to scale up the wings so they wouldn't look like dinky little hand fans or so that they wouldn't be so large that I would be unable to get out of the garage.   And there was also the question of how to wear my wrist-guards with the wings.   I had a rough idea of how long I wanted the tip-to-tip wingspan to be, and I spent something like three hours with a compass trying to work out proportions.  

Since I didn't want to have to keep track of ten or so chipboard pattern guides, I cheated a bit and only made four and doubled-up on similar sized feathers.  Then it was cut-cut-cut-cuting on the cardboard.   This wasn't so bad, as the weather was still nice, and I could work on them in the mid-October sunlight. 

The next step was cutting out the wings; I figured that by doubling up the cardboard and folding it, I'd have structurally sound wings with less of a chance for accidental, mid-flight molting.  It was around here that I discovered that bending wings wasn't going to work (luckily, we had enough cardboard that I could experiment with forms).  I experimented around with feather placement in the wings and determined that it wouldn't look too horrific. 

The wings did look a little less owl-like than I hoped; I was slightly bummed out about this until I decided that I was going to look more like Daedalus than an actual raptor.  And I tried to keep my mind off of Icarus (perhaps if I were younger and more buff....) 

The last week of October, and the final steps were painting the feathers.  I attempted to imitate the look of the barbs with the brushstrokes, but it was super subtle.  I think if I had mixed in small drops of black paint, I might have had more obvious looking barbs.   On October 30, I discovered that I'd dropped a feather on the ground and it was only half-painted.

Attaching the feathers to the actual wings was a labor of duct tape and glue.  And clamps.  And really heavy objects.  And I got the feather overlapping reversed on one of the wings.  

But the end result certainly passed the five-foot rule (if it looks good from five feet away, you're good) and was more or less what I wanted.  Judging from various neighbor's reaction, the wings were a startling success.  

A mid-afternoon test run assured me the wings weren't going to fall apart on me or adversely affect my balance.   Mark commented that I looked like an ancient Egyptian image, which was gratifying.  And kept my mind off of how sore my shoulder muscles were.

Halloween.  I lit jack-o-lanterns in the back.  The Full Moon rose.  The leaves had not yet fallen much, so the street was free of slick spots.  

As I glided through the shadows and the patches of sliver, I raised my winged arms and felt the air lifting me.  The wind exalted my hair.  The arching branches above merged with the canopy of stars.