The following only applies to you, if you expect to pipe a very
nice-looking royal icing transfer from the get-go: It would be advantageous that you have a good feeling for icing consistencies. And you should be able to pipe arched outlines
fairly accurately. Having experience with drying royal icing with your chosen method as well as your climate in mind, will also help.
But that being said, if you think more like me, then of course, just jump into the deep icing sea! Make this a practice piece and learn on the job :-)! And because we pipe this owl as a transfer and not directly onto a cookie, the only thing you'd be wasting is royal icing.
A big advantage of piping the whole owl as a transfer, of course, is that you can also place it onto a cake or any other
suitable pastry. Or just frame it - as I did with mine :-)! I made this mosaic sugar art frame with isomalt accents for her, which of course, will hold much longer than if it were on a cookie:
So... if you haven't done it yet, please do read my general considerations on layers and piping sequences on the main royal icing tutorials page. And then let's get to the example at hand:
For me, the eyes on an owl are most important. I want them to pop out. One way to do this is to make the eyeballs protrude and be higher than the rest, so they have to have rounded dimensions.
With the wet-on-wet royal icing technique, like many use for eyes, you'd never get the dimensions as in the photo below, because it's not suitable for this purpose. You could pressure pipe and then paint them. But I'm better at piping, so I'm going with that.
Now if you were to just pipe the different parts of the eyes, i. e. pupils (7), irises (8), and the white of the eyeballs (9) {the numbers in brackets refer to the illustration below}, let them dry and then attach them on top of each other, there would be gaps where a flat surface hits the rounded one below it. Not too nice.
Thus we have to pipe the pupils first, let them dry, and add them to the wet irises, so they can sink slightly into these, combining the two nicely without gaps. Then we do the same with the irises and the white of the eyeballs, but not with eyeballs and the facial disc parts (3), as we hide that connection with the dark dots.
So with the eyes there are drying times to consider, and they should be done before the rest of the owl, except for the facial disc parts: If you're good at piping and/or not too picky about precision, then you could just pipe the lines on them freehand.
But I'd like them to be somewhat exact at least, so will transfer the design. And for that, the royal icing of the facial disc parts has to be absolutely dry, and have to be piped right after the pupils to have ample time to harden until we get to the design transfer.
1 - Crown
2 - Ear Tufts
3 - Facial Disc Parts
4 - Facial Disc Rings
5 - Eyelashes
6 - Reflection Dots
7 - Pupils
8 - Irises
9 - Eyeballs
10 - Beak
11 - Heart
12+13 - Inner + Outer Wings
14 - Branch
15 - Feet
16 - Tail Feathers
So now we have established that we have to pipe the eyes and facial disc parts first and can now go...
Having fun yet :-D?
So this gives us the following 5 layers:
To make these parts appear layered, we will use different royal icing consistencies and filling techniques.
So you've followed The Purple Owl tutorial, and are now the proud owner of a super sweet owl artwork :-)!
Please share your piping adventure with us!
Was it easy-peasy, challenging, cool...?
Did something funny, nerve-wrecking, etc. happen?
Have you learned something useful?
Others will be able to comment on your owl and/or story.
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