Mary Jane

Mary Jane is making progress, finally. She is waiting patiently now for me to piece her dress together, my least favorite part of the whole dollmaking process. In one month, all the rush will be over, at least for a week or two!

One Down, Three to Go

I finally put the finishing touches on Birdie, my Fairy in the Wind Soft Sculpture.
She really came together at the end, and will get packed up to go to Convention as soon as possible.
Now I can concentrate on the other three new pieces; Grapefruit Baby, about three quarters done and waiting for her oversized Grapefruit basket, Mary Jane, who is waiting for my unsurpassed costuming skills (lol), and Adri, an Indian boy whose head sculpt I would spend all day with if I could.

So things are progressing, and though I'm sure I will still be scrambling the night before I have to leave, I'm beginning to see beyond these four to wonder what's next?

I have two or three ideas that are jostling around in my head wanting to be the next to "come to life" !

There May be Kittens Along with the Spring Blooms...

Our little stray kitty who showed up last summer with her Mother may have some little strays of her own any day.
I knew what I was in for when I let her hang around and get friendly, but what's a soft hearted person supposed to do when another cat gets abandoned and ends up in your back yard? Her Mama disappeared in the Fall, and she was all alone.

She quickly found friends, probably cousins, who heard that there would be a place to get in out of the rain and maybe something to eat.
Our little core group of three; the original we called Nanny after she brought a kitten about her age called Tyler, and then Tyler's Mama seen in the photo above.
Soon our poor Nanny was attracting every male in the neighborhood, and now she's definitely about to be a Mom.

The sad ending to all of this is that all of them, kittens included, will end up living outside because they are too wild to be caught in cages. By me anyway.

When this same scenario happened years ago, I was able to take in one of the kittens and give it a home, but this time around that space is occupied by Mocha, also a rescue from a shelter, who I have been warned will not tolerate any other cats.  

She's been through enough trauma herself in her nine years, and I have no desire to put her through any more.

So for now we wait, and hope that those who started all this by abandoning Nanny's Dad get their just reward.

Nanny's Dad, by the way, who we just call Dad, an unneutered beautiful pure black whose family picked up and left him without a backward glance, still comes around infrequently but has made a life for himself a few blocks away, scrounging food and living in the condemned house his family moved out of, making more kittens who will become the problem of the people in that area who choose to take pity on them...

No good ending to this story, except that summer is coming and all the poor orphans will get a break while we try to get a handle on this out of control situation before next Winter.

Quick update

Time is ticking away until Convention Day( http://www.quinlanmuseum.com/convention/) when all must be completed, and I have been racing the clock.

I haven't been taking a lot of photos, but I do have the concept sketch of Mary Jane, who is starting to subtly indicate that she has another name in mind.







She's my first attempt at an African American Soft Sculpture, and will have three layers of nylon to achieve the proper skin tones.
I'm on layer # 1, a reddish orange that is proving very hard on the eyes for stitching. The next layer will be a brown tone which may or may not be easier to work with...

Yesterday her head sculpt turned the corner from impossibly hopeless to "hey, there's the child I envisioned! I knew you were in there somewhere!"

Meanwhile Birdie

 is basically finished and waiting for photos. She will be getting her closeups this week as they go to ODACA for the second round of judging. I didn't take as many photos of her costuming process as I would have liked, but got caught up in the details of trying to get the bodice the way I wanted.

More photos soon of Grapefruit Baby and the next in line, an Indian boy who  was the first ever to start life as a head sculpt with the body to follow. We'll see whether that was a big mistake!

Merry Christmas!

Wishing all of you a very blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Full Speed Ahead, Christmas is Coming

Birdie has come a long way this week!After a nasty post- Thanksgiving weekend of illness that left me drained and stuck to the couch, I jumped back into work gratefully. 

Her head was covered last week, the first tentative paint layers laid down quickly.

She waited hopefully on the studio table through the long weekend of illness, then received what eventually I had to declare as the final touches. 

They say a good Artist knows when to stop... well, sometimes I wish for a better one than I to come in, lay their hand on my shoulder and say "Okay, stop." I know the tweaking with shading goes on way too long, and  only the prospect of attaching the hair spurs me on to the next step.

I'm using pure undyed Tussah silk this time, lovely to work with.

So the process begins, not as continuous this time as the silk is delicate and I want the silicone to dry somewhat between layers. 

Meanwhile the skinning has begun, though I'm sort of discombobulated this time around.

In the past, I have finished all layers of nylon skin before I even begin to sculpt the head. 

I'm going by a philosophy that is similar to a grass cutting tip I heard once. " Always mow in different patterns so that the grass does not become tired and unhealthy"

It's good to shake up the order of any process when one is working on the TENTH sculpture! 

Birdie will be number ten since 2006!

I probably should have named her Decca, since number nine was christened "Nona", but where would I go from there?

So the next step will be joining head and body, always a tricky maneuver but one I hope to get finished soon. Christmas preparations tend to make everything else fade into the background and suddenly it's January!

Next time I hope to show much more progress on Birdie and some updates on Grapefruit Baby and the newly named Mary Jane, a small African American child from the 1950's.

Happy Creating until then!

Final sanding on Birdie's Head

Birdie's head, with styrofoam pate inserted, is ready for her fabric covering;  one of the most delicate and difficult parts of this process. The fabric must be just the right texture, all humidity conditions need to be favorable, and I need to able to work with no interruptions. The adhesive must not clump but be sticky enough and worked into every crevice, and the fabric needs to go on without a wrinkle or the whole thing has to be pulled off and hope that the residue doesn't cause problems as I ease on another piece of fabric.

I will handle the adhesive difficulties with tiny disposable paintbrushes and the fabric eccentricities by making sure that I have at least two large squares of the proper texture and color waiting at my right hand, but the no interruptions is one that I haven't figured out yet. Someone will bang on the door and the phone will ring, but I'm getting better at ignoring both!

More soon!