Progress on the Angel & Bullet Sleeping

I had to snap a picture of what I've finished so far on the angel. While I had the camera out, I couldn't resist getting one of Bullet, too. He's all bundled up because in the last two days our temperature went from 90 degrees to 45! It's a little hard to get used to. The weather is even talking possible snow this evening. Life in the high desert can be a little unpredictable at times. The one and only thing you can count on is that Summers are hot.

So a bit about the angel. The gold breast plate will have to be remade. It doesn't quite fit anymore since I bulked out his body to match his head. He's 16 inches tall and his head 2 1/2 inches long a bit too big for his body. But it's already rock solid and I don't know if I can get it smaller. It should be 2 inches tall. When I did the intial sculpt for his head it ended up being 3 1/4. He was the big head angel. I managed to shrink it down 3/4 of an inch. To match his current head size, he should be 20 inches tall. So I have a couple of choices either I try to scale his head down by 1/4 inch and stretch his body by two inches, remake his head to fit his current body size or just live with a slightly large headed angel. I'm putting him a side for some time before I make my decision.

Since I've been making so many skulls these days I thought I'd work on a Day of the Dead skull nextwith a Mexican free tail bat. I picked up a really good book on floral embroidery, "Floral Stitches" by Judith Baker Montano. I thought it might be kind of fun to to do some on the skull.

Inspiration & Buttons!

I've been busy sculpting my cousin's angel. It's been a real process; one in which the sculpture is making itself, it seems. I start out with an expectation of how it's going to look and it decides differently. I had this idea for a seated angel, that would be first sculpted with paper clay and wire starting with the head first. It was nearly impossible to felt around the paper clay. So I had to scrap that idea. Next, I started with a wire form and started felting and before you know it my seated angel became a standing angel. He began to remind of one of my very favorite paintings, Marc Chagall's Juggler. I was both frightened and fascinated with that painting when I first saw a picture of it in my Childcraft encyclopedia. I think I was about 4 years old. I remember as a kid pounding out some horribly loud bass piano music as my ode to that bird man. And here some 50 years later the juggler seems to pop up in my angel. Lol. Hopefully, I will get his feet done today and will be starting on his head. Let's hope it doesn't decide to be a bird head. I don't think that's what my cousin had in mind.

I, also, wanted to share with you a recent thrift store find. Buttons! I bought 4 very big bags of assorted buttons for $6.00. I love the shapes, textures and colors. I could just spend hours sorting through them.

Buddy

I'll be posting little buddy on ebay tomorrow night. He's just 4 1/2 inches tall and comes with his very own "gilded" polymer clay acorn and fall leaves to play in.  I hope you like him.

Update: Buddy has sold.

Some Works in Progress

First up, is the start of a chipmunk that I'm working on. Second is a skull base for a doll.  My cousin after seeing Hailey, approached me about creating an angel doll for her sister. After giving it some thought and doing some research on angels, I decided to do Gabriel. It didn't seem fitting to do him out of sewn felt and I didn't like the way it looks kind of fuzzy. I wanted something between sculpted polymer and sewn cloth. I recently came across a very talented doll artist, Lisa L. Lichtenfels.  Her work has inspired me to try something different. I'm going to needle felt over a wire and paper clay skeletal structure and then sew nylon over the finished sculpture. I first started to sculpt the head out of styrofoam and when I glued and sewed the felt base to it, the foam core just collapsed. I then tried sculpting the head out of paper clay around a foil ball, like I did for Haily. This time because I was so impatient, I added way to much clay and it cracked while it dried. Plus the weight of the clay smooshed his lower jaw too far out giving him a caveman appearance. Finally, I decided to try sculpting the foam base and then adding a layer of paper clay over it. It will definitely need some sanding.  I've learned a couple of things with this. When working with large areas of paper clay, it's best do it in layers. Also a damp paper towel placed over the sculpture will help keep it from cracking while it's  drying. 

Pigling Bland inspired by Beatrix Potter

I just finished Pigling Bland this morning and have him listed on eBay.  I hope you like him :0)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Needle-Felted-Pigling-Bland-inspired-Beatrix-Potter-Pig-R-J-Andreae-/190579358389?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c5f6a3ab5

Little Autumn

I finished little Autumn a couple of days ago and have her listed on eBay. Her auction starts tonight.

Pics of Wowl & Bullet Retry

Here are the pictures. It's so weird how they didn't show up before. I had loaded them from my drive onto my blog using Picasa. I've had this problem before when I did that. This time I loaded the pictures into my web album.