Art Doll: Nest Eggs

During the Easter weekend, I have been doing some" catch up" work, completing some orders and finishing a little art doll I started a week ago as well as eating a chocolate Easter egg or two and going out to dinner and movies with friends - perfect weekend! Here is my little Forest Friend, rescuing a nest of eggs at Easter... and here are the basic steps:
1. Have a good friend to inspire, motivate and help...

Bobbi (Lambo Art) explaining anatomy and armature

2. Make an armature from wire and check the proportions against an anatomy chart.

Wire armature, secured with insulation tape.

3. Flesh out the armature by covering with lots of aluminium foil.

Armature covered with foil

4. Make foil bases/ armatures for head, hands and feet

Foil armatures

5. Cover and sculpt with polymer clay. I used Sculpey" Living Doll" and I made two pairs of hands because the first lot looked like lobster claws! Cure in an oven at 130 degrees C for 30 -40 minutes.

Sculpted pieces ready for the oven.

6. Colour the pieces. I used acrylic paints, powdered pastels and chalks and wax rubs. I also sanded the face a little to smooth out a few wrinkles I didn't want - I did leave a few.

Head : first colouring.

7. Put the body together. The hands and feet and head fit onto the wire armature. I also added and stitched a thin layer of batting to the foil armature, and then another stretch layer of underwear ( like a skin) - I used a sock.

Work in progress ; layer of batting, and"underwear".

8. Now that the doll's personality is beginning to make itself clear, add some clothing. I intended this doll to be a Russian woman like a babushka, but he wanted to be a little forest friend, a bird lover and protector. All the clothes are recycled from old bits and pieces, discarded jumpers and scraps of fabric.

Clothes from re-purposed jumpers and fabric scraps.

9. Make accessories. In this case, this forest friend has rescued a birds' nest , so I made a nest from painted and textured wire and some birds' eggs from polymer clay (a mixture of translucent, turquoise, and pearl white Premo Sculpey) .

Nest and eggs

10, Straighten out the wire limbs and pose the doll to stand up on its own.

Whatever your beliefs are, I hope your Easter weekend was filled with peace, love, laughter and creativity.

In the Pink

At Tag Tuesday . Pinky O' Hagan is hosting a tag challenge which asks for 'a bit of pink".... not so difficult if you like pink. I don't use a lot of pink in my work, so it was quite a bit of a challenge when I thought only of pink - my thoughts went to pink roses, pink hearts, pink confectionery !!! Then I referred to this week's colour prompts, #coloricombo by artists Este MacLeod.... pink with sap green, dark tea, and sea green. I'm not sure I got the colours in this palette exactly, but here is my tag, a stylised landscape - The collaged background of the tag has torn pieces of watercolour art rejects, painted magazine pages and a little bit of gift paper. The tree silhouette is decorated with paper dots, cut with a hole puncher.

Fish and Sticks : Art Dolls

This week I've been working on fish and sticks .... The sticks are the message stick art dolls which were very popular, attracting some attention and a few orders at the Wise Women exhibition. Each of the message stick dolls are from the Wise Women series, each with her own personality and message of wisdom, handwritten on a handmade timber tag. I gather the sticks during my walks around my neighbourhood and the tags are made from special bits of timber, some collected by me or my husband or from off cuts gifted to us from another doll making friend whose husband makes bagpipes. These dolls start off very simply with a wrap around a stick, in the general shape of a body. 'Naked" message stick dolls - strips of wadding wrapped around found sticks. Then I usually wrap other layers of fabric, wool, and/or fibres, over which I do some simple embroidery. I sculpt or mould small face masks for these dolls. I really like using "sari ribbon" as w...

The Sea - for Tag Tuesday

For the current challenge "The Sea" at Tag Tuesday, I made a couple of painted/ hand drawn tags . These were created from a piece of watercolour paper which had been sprayed with acrylic paint - blue, yellow and quinacridone gold. I then sketched over the top , trying to follow some pattern created by the splatter and then add some felt tip pen lines watercolour pencil to highlight the shapes. The tags represent the fantasies of the hidden city of Atlantis and a mermaid. With this theme in mind, I also add a free motion stitched tag I made earlier this year for 29 Faces -

Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

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