Monday, October 24, 2011

Elain and Ashleigh in the studio!

Two of my newest completed girls sat for quick portrait sessions!  They are patiently awaiting bigger and better photo shoots though.  Since I am in my last year of my Masters of Fine Arts degree and fell madly in love with doll making I have found a way to blend the work.  I have been creating scenes for the dolls to interact in.  So far the final product is photographs of these situations.  I am still in the first stages of this stream of thought though so those photos aren't ready to be shared.

However I can't help but share their portrait sessions!

Sweet little Elain...

She can be pretty shy.  The kids used to tease her and hang things from her antlers so she mainly kept to herself.  You can usually draw her out with some fresh fruit or vegetables though.

Then there is Ashleigh...



She always wanted to be a normal little girl.  She adored their long flowing hair and envied their lives.  As she patiently grew in the forest she collected the things they left behind.  Someday she hoped to collect a lost little girl for herself...


What do you think?

Thursday, October 6, 2011

The New Adventure!

Well hello all!

This summer I stumbled upon the world of art dolls!  As a photographer I found a fondness of people as characters in my work so as my eyes wandered over the faces of Art Dolls I was captivated by their intrinsic nature to tell a story.

So after pouring over Art Doll maker websites I decided to just jump right in!  I bought some paper clay and started crafting away ... it was an adventure!
And thus Clarissa was created!  I like to make up little snippets of a story for each doll.  The story is revealed to me through each step of crafting the doll.

Clarissa's story so far -
So tired.  Clarissa has been dancing far to long to hide the secret... but she's done.


Anyways so I made Clarissa which was definitely an experiment.  I wasn't unhappy with her but I knew there was room for improvement!

So then I tried again and made Cordelia as a kind of study!

She is a classy lady but I was still burning through clay faster than I wanted to and Cordelia was WAY bigger than I was ever going to make a full doll!

So I put my nose to the grindstone read through tutorials and experimented with different materials.  In the future I will post links to these tutorials and my own attempts at them!  Finally I was ready to try the Woodland Girls!



However I think this enough talk for one post so I'll talk about The Woodland Girls more later.  Plus I have three more dolls about to be finished followed by 5 little Dia De Los Muertos dolls.  Reveals and Sneak peeks soon to follow!