Some times they get mad...angry animal needle felt

I was trying to capture that "cute" effect that comes with simpler, more abstract designs but still could not constrain myself from adding shape and detail to...."angry bear" . (I'm assuming that he is angry because I found his belly button because my cat always gets mad when I try and find his....touchy, touchy ).

End result is that I did learn something from the process . One is that it is very difficult to fight your own nature and mine appears to fall between "detailed and realistic vs abstract and cartoonish " . I can never seem to stand firmly in either camp .

Thing two, I learned, is that 6 inch critters take a lot less time then my 1' and 2' critters . I like the big guys but that is so many hours of poking before you get to feel the satisfaction of the inner animal emerging ....sometime, patience is not my strong suit .

Thirdly, I realized that I really suck at felting eyes . I just haven't learned how to make wool eyes look real enough . (Time to hunt down some nice glass eyes .)



I don't know what if any, type of animal this is yet, but thought I would show a critter before detailing is done . Just getting this far, was 10 hours of firming up and shaping . I figure there will be another 3-4 hours to finish him . This "whatever" is about a foot tall and still needs the top of his head, some ears, feet and tail and furry fringe....that is really the fun part of the felting....giving them a bit of personality and deciding what to add
I now have a little gang to inspire me to keep felting . It's fun for me to see them all hanging out and think about who else would look good in my critter crew .