Sunday, February 24, 2008
I almost forgot
Saturday I went to the Guilded Lilies monthly get-together-activity and made a "spirit doll", starting with one of those articulated artist's manikins. Here it is (I don't think it's either a she or a he. I think it's just an it spirit.) It's called "It's Safe to Dance."
Theamorph - the rest of the story
When last we met our intrepid goddess-in-training, she looked something like this:
The next step after that is "completely covered in at least one, and in most places multiple layers of unryu" (sorry, Kat - the face had to go.)
After a base coat of metallic taupe acrylic paint mixed with some kind of coffee brown (I did have Van Dyke brown, but didn't find it until later. It would have helped), the upper part is "antiqued" with a mixture of the base coat, more water, some black paint, and some water-based varnish.
Then the fun part - starting at the top and working my way down, clothing the entire lower section in silk maple leaves, at first using Mod Podge to get them to cling closely to the body, but in the lower sections using a fast-setting glue to stick them in place more quickly (esp. since I wanted the lower parts to stick out in places. I'm happy with the outcome.)
The thing on her head is a clump of dyed-green Spanish moss, which I in turn dyed grey-brown again with some of the leftover antiquing solution, quick-dried by placing it on a weighted-down Handiwipe over the bathroom floor furnace vent (more crazy art-making at my house), and then glued onto her head to simulate a bird's nest. The hair is then rooted down *thru* the moss, which also gives it some loft.
The hair is a very soft yarn with lovely slubs in it (what KatDoc insists on calling "nubbies") that I have had on hand for quite a while waiting for the perfect recipient for dreadlocks.
And finally, the complete Demeter:
I attached a piece of parchment-y paper on the bottom with post-it glue, that said:
"Autumn time, red leaves fall
while the weeping sky looks over all
Demeter sadly walks the land,
the dying grasses in her hand*
The Goddess Demeter, grief-stricken at the abduction of her daughter Persephone, wandered in despair and neglected the earth. Leaves turned brown and fell from the trees, and the land became barren and cold." Underneath the paper it says "Demeter" and is signed and dated. She was put in the silent auction last night and I don't know yet how much she sold for. *fingers crossed*
*lyric from a round by the women's choral group Libana
The next step after that is "completely covered in at least one, and in most places multiple layers of unryu" (sorry, Kat - the face had to go.)
After a base coat of metallic taupe acrylic paint mixed with some kind of coffee brown (I did have Van Dyke brown, but didn't find it until later. It would have helped), the upper part is "antiqued" with a mixture of the base coat, more water, some black paint, and some water-based varnish.
Then the fun part - starting at the top and working my way down, clothing the entire lower section in silk maple leaves, at first using Mod Podge to get them to cling closely to the body, but in the lower sections using a fast-setting glue to stick them in place more quickly (esp. since I wanted the lower parts to stick out in places. I'm happy with the outcome.)
The thing on her head is a clump of dyed-green Spanish moss, which I in turn dyed grey-brown again with some of the leftover antiquing solution, quick-dried by placing it on a weighted-down Handiwipe over the bathroom floor furnace vent (more crazy art-making at my house), and then glued onto her head to simulate a bird's nest. The hair is then rooted down *thru* the moss, which also gives it some loft.
The hair is a very soft yarn with lovely slubs in it (what KatDoc insists on calling "nubbies") that I have had on hand for quite a while waiting for the perfect recipient for dreadlocks.
And finally, the complete Demeter:
I attached a piece of parchment-y paper on the bottom with post-it glue, that said:
"Autumn time, red leaves fall
while the weeping sky looks over all
Demeter sadly walks the land,
the dying grasses in her hand*
The Goddess Demeter, grief-stricken at the abduction of her daughter Persephone, wandered in despair and neglected the earth. Leaves turned brown and fell from the trees, and the land became barren and cold." Underneath the paper it says "Demeter" and is signed and dated. She was put in the silent auction last night and I don't know yet how much she sold for. *fingers crossed*
*lyric from a round by the women's choral group Libana
Monday, February 18, 2008
I amuse myself
Art-making, as I said in a recent post, can often involve as much engineering as painting. Art-making can also take you down some extremely odd paths. To wit:
This past week I had a book out from the library called 500 Handmade Dolls: Exploration of the Human Form (somewhat mis-titled, as quite a few of the included pieces can hardly be called "human") and got inspired to make some paper wings for a doll. I had a bunch of pieces of kraft paper (which in my last art-making experiment had been soaked in a bucket for varying lengths of time to discover the optimum soaking time for getting rid of sizing before the paper started to disintegrate) and they were nice and crinkly, but I wanted them to be softer, more translucent, more leathery-skin-looking. Like grease-soaked paper. I mentally reviewed my available list of oily substances: cooking oil? would get nasty and rancid. Jojoba oil would not turn, but no way was I going to waste expensive jojoba on an experiment. What I had on hand that I thought would grease up paper nicely was petroleum jelly-based skin cream.
So I took a section of paper and a wide flat brush and the tube of goo and started painting. Unfortunately, it didn't want to sink in, and I realized that it is usually helped along by the warmth of the skin, so... into the microwave, at 40%, for about 20 seconds. Then it was *too* greasy, so I folded it into another piece of brown paper and burnished the whole package with my hands. What I was left with was two pieces of flexible, slightly translucent, slightly oily brown paper. In retrospect, maybe I should have colored the paper before I greased it up. I think it may still take textile paint pretty well, which is translucent itself. Will post pics of the results later. In any case, my sister suspects I am a loon for this kind of pursuit.
Edited 9-13-08 because I finally remembered to put this pic up. I cut two pieces of copper wire the same length and folded them simultaneously into wing-ish-shapes (rather than shape one and then try to match it - never had much success that way), then covered them with the oiled paper, trimmed to shape, folded the edges over and glued them in place. Still haven't tried painting them, but one of these days one of my creations will cry out for oiled brown paper wings and I'll be ready!
This past week I had a book out from the library called 500 Handmade Dolls: Exploration of the Human Form (somewhat mis-titled, as quite a few of the included pieces can hardly be called "human") and got inspired to make some paper wings for a doll. I had a bunch of pieces of kraft paper (which in my last art-making experiment had been soaked in a bucket for varying lengths of time to discover the optimum soaking time for getting rid of sizing before the paper started to disintegrate) and they were nice and crinkly, but I wanted them to be softer, more translucent, more leathery-skin-looking. Like grease-soaked paper. I mentally reviewed my available list of oily substances: cooking oil? would get nasty and rancid. Jojoba oil would not turn, but no way was I going to waste expensive jojoba on an experiment. What I had on hand that I thought would grease up paper nicely was petroleum jelly-based skin cream.
So I took a section of paper and a wide flat brush and the tube of goo and started painting. Unfortunately, it didn't want to sink in, and I realized that it is usually helped along by the warmth of the skin, so... into the microwave, at 40%, for about 20 seconds. Then it was *too* greasy, so I folded it into another piece of brown paper and burnished the whole package with my hands. What I was left with was two pieces of flexible, slightly translucent, slightly oily brown paper. In retrospect, maybe I should have colored the paper before I greased it up. I think it may still take textile paint pretty well, which is translucent itself. Will post pics of the results later. In any case, my sister suspects I am a loon for this kind of pursuit.
Edited 9-13-08 because I finally remembered to put this pic up. I cut two pieces of copper wire the same length and folded them simultaneously into wing-ish-shapes (rather than shape one and then try to match it - never had much success that way), then covered them with the oiled paper, trimmed to shape, folded the edges over and glued them in place. Still haven't tried painting them, but one of these days one of my creations will cry out for oiled brown paper wings and I'll be ready!
Saturday, February 16, 2008
The new one - the first stages
The process with every project I do is different - sometimes I get an idea how I want it to look as a finished product (not that the finished product usually mirrors my original vision when I get done monkeying with it), sometimes I just get a snippet that inspires me to start (a glimpse of another artwork, some visual on TV or in a magazine, or occasionally pure inspiration.) More often it's work. Sometimes it's a blend of both. At my sister's insistence, I'm trying to more precisely document the process on this doll, which I need to finish by February 22nd. No pressure.
The doll I started with (forgot to take a "before" pic, when she had hair) did not have the typical Barbie heart-shaped face - she is a little more exotic looking; almond eyes, heavier lips. At the thrift stores I deliberately seek out dolls that look different from the usual - even if their faces will be covered with tissue and painted over, the underlying structure makes a difference.
Getting them bald is very therapeutic - I cut the hair as short as possible with scissors, then use needlenose pliers to yank the little tufts out one at a time. It's much, much easier to pull the little tufts out from the *inside* of the head, but the way the doll heads are put on these days, it's far too easy to accidentally break off the ball that holds everything in place, and it's no fun trying to get the head to stay on again without that ball, so I do it the harder-but-less-complicated way.
On occasion, working with mixed media is as much an engineering project as it is art. In this case, I wanted the skirt to be conical, so I had to figure out how to create a cone sturdy enough to hold up the figure but flexible enough not to bend and leave ugly creases in the surface that I'd have to then smooth out with paperclay. (Note: Not so successful on this part. More later.)
Step 1: The cone. I knew the shape had to start as a circle in order for me to end up with a wedge of the correct size, a straight-edged curved piece (probably some word for it, I don't know), wide at the bottom and narrow at the top, with an echoing curve along the top edge for the opening that would encase her body. Fine. How to get that? Oh, and it would need to meet precisely at the edges and be flat on the bottom so she'll stand firm. I figured this out while getting ready for work one morning, so at 7:45 a.m. I was standing in my dining room with a piece of poster board, with a flat thumbtack pushed up through the middle, and a pencil on a 14" long string with a loop at the loose end that could go around the point of the tack, so I could scribe a circle. (Posterboard is not 28" wide, by the way, which could be important in some situations but was not a deal-breaker here.) Later that night I cut out the circle, cut out a circle from the center (my roll of masking tape was the right size), slit it up tbrough one edge, and proceeded to overlap it and squinch it down until it was the right size to hold a doll. It was at this moment I realized I could have just cut out a quarter of the circle and saved myself some time and effort, but hey, I learn by doing. And the other point of this is that the posterboard was just supposed to be a template for the real material that I wanted to use for the skirt.
Step 2: The real material. The previous figure was framed in a kind of cardboard, about the weight of the back of a legal pad, which I salvaged from the office and which cut cleanly and held up very well. Terrific, I thought, I'll just cut the "skirt" out of that. Nice try. It doesn't flex enough. (Even when put into the microwave for about 30 seconds. Hey, did you know cardboard will scorch in the microwave?) Bottom line is, it's too stiff to form into a cone, so we're back to the poster board, which turns out to be not quite right either, but at this point I can either tear off the whole thing and start fresh, or put up with the poster board's limitations (like I can't put a lot of paperclay over it, because it absorbs the water and the posterboard collapses a little, leaving me with bit divots to try to fill in. Fortunately, the unryu [mulberry tissue] I cover it with will disguise a multitude of ills.)
Step 3: The bottom is just a circle of the heavier cardboard, taped into place with masking tape. All of this will be covered with multiple layers of unryu and glue and then painted. The unryu and glue also make the whole thing stronger than the posterboard by itself. Oh, and I stuff the space around her legs with polyfill so she doesn't move around. Also helps with the structural integrity.
I'll post more later about how she got to this point. Enough pics already.
The doll I started with (forgot to take a "before" pic, when she had hair) did not have the typical Barbie heart-shaped face - she is a little more exotic looking; almond eyes, heavier lips. At the thrift stores I deliberately seek out dolls that look different from the usual - even if their faces will be covered with tissue and painted over, the underlying structure makes a difference.
Getting them bald is very therapeutic - I cut the hair as short as possible with scissors, then use needlenose pliers to yank the little tufts out one at a time. It's much, much easier to pull the little tufts out from the *inside* of the head, but the way the doll heads are put on these days, it's far too easy to accidentally break off the ball that holds everything in place, and it's no fun trying to get the head to stay on again without that ball, so I do it the harder-but-less-complicated way.
On occasion, working with mixed media is as much an engineering project as it is art. In this case, I wanted the skirt to be conical, so I had to figure out how to create a cone sturdy enough to hold up the figure but flexible enough not to bend and leave ugly creases in the surface that I'd have to then smooth out with paperclay. (Note: Not so successful on this part. More later.)
Step 1: The cone. I knew the shape had to start as a circle in order for me to end up with a wedge of the correct size, a straight-edged curved piece (probably some word for it, I don't know), wide at the bottom and narrow at the top, with an echoing curve along the top edge for the opening that would encase her body. Fine. How to get that? Oh, and it would need to meet precisely at the edges and be flat on the bottom so she'll stand firm. I figured this out while getting ready for work one morning, so at 7:45 a.m. I was standing in my dining room with a piece of poster board, with a flat thumbtack pushed up through the middle, and a pencil on a 14" long string with a loop at the loose end that could go around the point of the tack, so I could scribe a circle. (Posterboard is not 28" wide, by the way, which could be important in some situations but was not a deal-breaker here.) Later that night I cut out the circle, cut out a circle from the center (my roll of masking tape was the right size), slit it up tbrough one edge, and proceeded to overlap it and squinch it down until it was the right size to hold a doll. It was at this moment I realized I could have just cut out a quarter of the circle and saved myself some time and effort, but hey, I learn by doing. And the other point of this is that the posterboard was just supposed to be a template for the real material that I wanted to use for the skirt.
Step 2: The real material. The previous figure was framed in a kind of cardboard, about the weight of the back of a legal pad, which I salvaged from the office and which cut cleanly and held up very well. Terrific, I thought, I'll just cut the "skirt" out of that. Nice try. It doesn't flex enough. (Even when put into the microwave for about 30 seconds. Hey, did you know cardboard will scorch in the microwave?) Bottom line is, it's too stiff to form into a cone, so we're back to the poster board, which turns out to be not quite right either, but at this point I can either tear off the whole thing and start fresh, or put up with the poster board's limitations (like I can't put a lot of paperclay over it, because it absorbs the water and the posterboard collapses a little, leaving me with bit divots to try to fill in. Fortunately, the unryu [mulberry tissue] I cover it with will disguise a multitude of ills.)
Step 3: The bottom is just a circle of the heavier cardboard, taped into place with masking tape. All of this will be covered with multiple layers of unryu and glue and then painted. The unryu and glue also make the whole thing stronger than the posterboard by itself. Oh, and I stuff the space around her legs with polyfill so she doesn't move around. Also helps with the structural integrity.
I'll post more later about how she got to this point. Enough pics already.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Found Art
A couple of weeks ago I stumbled over a website for a terrific idea that I think needs better promotion: Found Art. I love their mission statement:
How gorgeous is that? The idea is to leave little pieces of art -- uplifting, positive, life-affirming art, not that there's anything wrong with dark, brooding, acid-tinged art, it's just not a Random Acts of Kindness kind of thing, which is what these folks are aiming for -- in public places for people to find.
Anyway, a while back I started prettying up a laminate sample from the Big Box Hardware Store That Shall Remain Nameless But Uses a Lot of Orange in Their Decorating Scheme. Got it to a point where I liked it (copper surfacer, patinated, stamped with pale green chalk ink in a paisley pattern, edged in copper marker), but had no idea what to do with it from there. Along comes Found Art! and I'm inspired. These little tags are perfect for making little art pieces and leaving them for strangers to find. And before you report me to the Orange Big Box people, I only took a couple, and now a friend has given me her whole string of laminate samples (she's a decorator and had an extra) so I have plenty to work on without depleting the stock that's properly supposed to go to people who are actually contemplating having their kitchen counters redone.
So tonight I came home to find my order of Found Art cards from Vista Print (250 cards printed with the mission statement, free except for shipping) and decided to make my first piece of art to give away to complete strangers. The image is out of my box of magazine cutouts - originally an ad for a CD called "The Prayer Cycle", which came out probably 10-15 years ago. I've been waiting for a special purpose for it. I think this is perfect. I'm going to hang it on the bulletin board at my favorite coffee house this weekend.
Found Art! strives to make the world a better place right now by empowering people across to globe to share on a soul level. We believe in the power of art to communicate and heal. We believe all people are creative and that the expression of that creativity opens the heart of both the creator and the receiver. Open hearts communicate at a deeper level, are naturally more compassionate, and are more aware and concerned about our global family.
How gorgeous is that? The idea is to leave little pieces of art -- uplifting, positive, life-affirming art, not that there's anything wrong with dark, brooding, acid-tinged art, it's just not a Random Acts of Kindness kind of thing, which is what these folks are aiming for -- in public places for people to find.
Anyway, a while back I started prettying up a laminate sample from the Big Box Hardware Store That Shall Remain Nameless But Uses a Lot of Orange in Their Decorating Scheme. Got it to a point where I liked it (copper surfacer, patinated, stamped with pale green chalk ink in a paisley pattern, edged in copper marker), but had no idea what to do with it from there. Along comes Found Art! and I'm inspired. These little tags are perfect for making little art pieces and leaving them for strangers to find. And before you report me to the Orange Big Box people, I only took a couple, and now a friend has given me her whole string of laminate samples (she's a decorator and had an extra) so I have plenty to work on without depleting the stock that's properly supposed to go to people who are actually contemplating having their kitchen counters redone.
So tonight I came home to find my order of Found Art cards from Vista Print (250 cards printed with the mission statement, free except for shipping) and decided to make my first piece of art to give away to complete strangers. The image is out of my box of magazine cutouts - originally an ad for a CD called "The Prayer Cycle", which came out probably 10-15 years ago. I've been waiting for a special purpose for it. I think this is perfect. I'm going to hang it on the bulletin board at my favorite coffee house this weekend.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
This is some of the stuff I played around with at Sunday's Shiva PaintStiks class:
Two tries using the same rubber stamp behind plain black cotton fabric - on the blue side, I took a gold paintstik and just brushed it over a few spots to highlight. The teacher liked it and picked it up to show the other folks in class - there was a lot of that, showing people what ideas others had and how they turned out.
This was fun - a piece of pre-printed fabric, white on white, that the teacher handed out samples of so we could see how different surfaces respond differently. When I applied the paintstik, smudging it over the surface, the white pattern and the white background each took the paint in different ways. Used another spiral texture as a rubbing plate behind the fabric (you may notice a pattern here. I have spirals all over the place.) - LOVE how this turned out.
This was a Roylco rubbing plate of ginkgo leaves - hard to keep the paint right where the outline was, because I was working blind. You really have to feel your way. I could see doing this as a repeat all over a piece of fabric.
This is one unmounted rubber stamp, and I taped it to the table to I could use different colors without losing the alignment of the design. The leaves were a learning experience: on the first one (at right), I had folded the fabric under so it would be out of the way, but the multiple layers made the design muddy. The green one in the middle and the gold one on the left are both done with the fabric stretched out in a single layer.
Tomorrow is the 5th day after the class - you have to let the paint cure completely before heat-setting it. You can iron each piece, or toss them all in the dryer on high for 30 minutes. Guess which option I'm choosing.
Two tries using the same rubber stamp behind plain black cotton fabric - on the blue side, I took a gold paintstik and just brushed it over a few spots to highlight. The teacher liked it and picked it up to show the other folks in class - there was a lot of that, showing people what ideas others had and how they turned out.
This was fun - a piece of pre-printed fabric, white on white, that the teacher handed out samples of so we could see how different surfaces respond differently. When I applied the paintstik, smudging it over the surface, the white pattern and the white background each took the paint in different ways. Used another spiral texture as a rubbing plate behind the fabric (you may notice a pattern here. I have spirals all over the place.) - LOVE how this turned out.
This was a Roylco rubbing plate of ginkgo leaves - hard to keep the paint right where the outline was, because I was working blind. You really have to feel your way. I could see doing this as a repeat all over a piece of fabric.
This is one unmounted rubber stamp, and I taped it to the table to I could use different colors without losing the alignment of the design. The leaves were a learning experience: on the first one (at right), I had folded the fabric under so it would be out of the way, but the multiple layers made the design muddy. The green one in the middle and the gold one on the left are both done with the fabric stretched out in a single layer.
Tomorrow is the 5th day after the class - you have to let the paint cure completely before heat-setting it. You can iron each piece, or toss them all in the dryer on high for 30 minutes. Guess which option I'm choosing.
Monday, February 4, 2008
2008 is supposed to be my year
I've decided to take as many mini-classes as possible this year, to expand on and enhance my skills. My sister says this sounds suspiciously like the taking on new media and its attendant spendiness, what with books and supplies and tools, that I usually claim to be trying to avoid. Yesterday I took a 3-hour class (more like guided play) on using Shiva PaintStiks on fabric. These are irridescent oil paints in a wax binder that allows them to be used like big soft crayons - drawing directly on the material, applying them to a piece of fabric and rubbing the paint into a stencil, putting a texture mat/rubbing plate/bold rubber stamp under the fabric and dragging the stick over the surface to pick up the design - lots of different applications. I have a piece of beautiful sable brown crushed taffeta that I want to highlight with gold paintstik and use for a ceremonial robe for one of the Theamorphs (this will probably involve sewing, which anyone who knows me will find hilarious. Just shush.)
In March one of my new acquaintances from the Guilded Lilies is teaching a class at Byzantium, our first-and-best local bead store, on bead embroidery. I've done some of that already, but if I let too much time lapse between attempts I forget how to do it and have to start over from scratch, so I think I'll let a pro help me out. She makes awesome beaded dolls, which is where my interest lies.
In April there's a 3-day class by a member of the GL on needlesculpting cloth doll faces and bodies - not positive I'll take it, as it's not really my thing, but it promises to be amazingly inexpensive and probably would be useful in the long run.
In June there's a Soldering 101 class at European Papers/the Columbus Center for Paper and Book Arts (CCPBA) that I desperately want to take. I have a soldering iron, lead-free solder, 1/4" copper tape, even a box of 1.5" x 1.5" Memory Glass - and haven't done a freaking thing with it. Mostly because I'm afraid of hopelessly screwing it up, even though I know that part of the learning process of pretty much everything is the process of screwing things up. Hopelessly.
So I have my monthly continued ed pretty well sussed out - we'll see what the rest of the year brings!
In March one of my new acquaintances from the Guilded Lilies is teaching a class at Byzantium, our first-and-best local bead store, on bead embroidery. I've done some of that already, but if I let too much time lapse between attempts I forget how to do it and have to start over from scratch, so I think I'll let a pro help me out. She makes awesome beaded dolls, which is where my interest lies.
In April there's a 3-day class by a member of the GL on needlesculpting cloth doll faces and bodies - not positive I'll take it, as it's not really my thing, but it promises to be amazingly inexpensive and probably would be useful in the long run.
In June there's a Soldering 101 class at European Papers/the Columbus Center for Paper and Book Arts (CCPBA) that I desperately want to take. I have a soldering iron, lead-free solder, 1/4" copper tape, even a box of 1.5" x 1.5" Memory Glass - and haven't done a freaking thing with it. Mostly because I'm afraid of hopelessly screwing it up, even though I know that part of the learning process of pretty much everything is the process of screwing things up. Hopelessly.
So I have my monthly continued ed pretty well sussed out - we'll see what the rest of the year brings!
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Another one flies the nest
My "Testimony" doll was raffled off Thursday night, and she was won by one of my co-workers, who was so excited about getting her - she said she comes from an artsy family and that they would all be jealous of her new acquisition. I'm just happy she found a new home with someone who will appreciate her.
So now I need to get to work on another, for the silent auction at our sister affiliate in another city, to take place February 23rd.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
