Steampunk Raven Sculpture

When thinking of what to make my friend for her birthday, I thought about creating something funky for her house, which is now being renovated.  As we both kind of lean towards "the dark side" I picked up some raffia covered wire and started to play around with a framework skeleton of a raven.

The raven symbol is a good luck symbol in some cultures, while others find it to be a creepy and unsettling symbol ala Hitchcock's "The Birds."  Me? I think of them as kind of a mix of all the iconic imagery, and a good place to start for my steampunk gift.

I started to bend the wire into the raven shape, much like a dimensional contour drawing.





Then, I spray painted the covered wire black.













Next, I began to build up the "skeleton" with gears and twiddly bits to replicate eyes, vertebra and the layers of the birds wing feathers.

Overall the effect is steampunkilicious, I think. What do you think?