Black-Eyed Suzie Art Dolls and Oddities

The Octavia Notes, part IV

I'm very excited to finally be able to post these photos of a completed Octavia!  Though I made many mistakes along the way, I'm really happy with how she turned out in the end and I must admit, I have a lot of affection for her, flaws and all.  I think she is too flawed to sell, however, so she'll live in my studio.  But I've got the BJD bug now and will definitely make more.  In fact, Octavia was a prototype and part of a grant application; if it's successful, I would be able to afford to buy a kiln and would start working toward porcelain BJDs.  Even if I don't get the grant, that is still my goal, but it just might take me a bit longer.

This girl can't stand on her own, and the stringing was really tricky. So much to learn! I think my straw idea was not a great in in the end because the straws were too narrow and it made pulling the elastic cord through really hard.  Maybe fatter straws?  I still really like the idea of not having to carve out all that foam afterward because I think it would leave the limbs too fragile in places if you're making a smaller, spindlier doll.

 

I think her face is my favourite part.  I was worried while I was sculpting her that it might be bland, but I always forget how much painting and wigging bring the doll to life.

Here you can see a bit more clearly where I had problems: the knee joints are too gaping and the legs are too slim for the torso I think.  For my next prototype, I'll make an extra joint in the knees and elbows which will allow for greater range, but I was under the gun for this one.  And no genitals for my dollies!  I'm no prude, but genitalia on dolls creeps me out, especially on ball-jointed dolls, who often seem to look prepubescent and overly-sexualized for my taste.  I guess I'll just have to learn to make really nice underclothes!   But next time, I'll definitely take the time to refine the anatomy more, because right now the torso is fairly blank and featureless.  Again, I ran out of time...

Total non-sequiter: Anybody else panting for True Blood?

The Octavia Notes, part III

Last week, we experienced a truly horrifying late-summer heatwave, with high humidity and temperatures in the 30s/ high-90s.  I did a lot of lying in front of fans with my feet in a bucket of cool water, and at one point I had a mini breakdown after watching an emotionally manipulative slow-motion scene of an overweight girl scoring her first-ever basket on the show Huge.  I literally sobbed, "The fat girl got a basket" over and over as Mr. L held my hand and finally asked very gently, "What was in her basket?  Was it something very upsetting?"  Ahaha.  Thankfully the temperature has dropped ten degrees and it's on to saner times... Pregnancy+Hormones+Heat = A round, sweaty, embarrassing mess.

Octavia thinks I'm a very silly person, though she's too polite to say so, and she didn't even complain when I drilled holes in her eyes and sawed off the top of her head.

She was a little annoyed when I, so entranced by the power of my new Dremel, over-sanded her eye cavity from behind, making a hole in her eyebrow.

 And she was very alarmed when I carved away her upper lids altogether, leaving her with this rather unnerving and startled expression.

But she got over it eventually, regaining her composure and general air of mystery.  She did begin to tire of being a disembodied head, and finally snapped at me to get on with it, already! A girl expects a body.  These dolls - they demand much of us.

 So, a body I gave her.  Or at least arranged for her, and she liked knowing that all her bits and pieces were nearby.  Once she was all laid out, I saw many flaws, but I thought it would be unkind to point them out, and I love her all the same, even with her too-big hands and feet, her too-short legs.  She is, in fact, all strung together now (a harrowing experience!) and even has hair and a make-shift dress.  But I won't be ready to take final photos until tomorrow, and so she'll come to you in her complete state in a few days.  For now she's wondering if anybody out there will raise a glass and toast with her to celebrate her new body, since I'm no fun.  (Oh, red wine - I do miss you!)

The Octavia Notes, part II

We're back in Montreal, and while it's always somewhat painful to leave Cape Breton and my family, it was also nice to get home.  I've been feeling very lazy the past few days - I'm entering my 3rd trimester and they say you start to get tired again.  Boo!  It was so nice to feel like my old self again for the past few months, but it's only 3 more months and then the little person will arrive and then I suppose I'll get to know the true meaning of fatigue!  But I have been working away on Octavia, and these pictures are actually about a week old - she much further along than this, so I'll post more recent pictures soon.  Does this mean I can't keep up with myself?  Not for long, I suspect... The evolution of a leg that then became this:

The hands started out as twisted wire (it doesn't need to be twisted, but I only had very thin wire so I made do - thicker wire would probably work better):

 

 

(I forgot to photograph the step where the wire is wrapped in bits of cotton with glue so that the clay adheres to the wire, so I'm hoping Mr. Yoshida wouldn't mind that I'm posting his photos of that step here.)

In the end, my hands ended up looking a lot less realistic than the ones the book, but I think that's just the way it goes with me - I don't think my BJD will end up looking nearly as anatomically correct, or with as accurate proportions of many of the best BJD makers such as Yoshida and Marina Bychkova.  But then, I also hope that's what will set them apart and make them unique.  So I press on, letting my freaky fingers flag fly...

The Octavia Notes, part I

I'm very excited to be able to share early photos of Octavia, my first ever ball-jointed doll.  I'm annoyed with myself for not taking more detailed in-progress shots of the early stages, so I'll try to slow down from now on and remember to take more photos.  For the most part, I've been following the instructions in Yoshida Style (the photos only, as all the text is in Japanese).

But I have made few modifications: instead of styrofoam, I used spray foam insulation for the core of her head and body.  After spraying it into a cardboard box and letting it dry/ expand in the box, I could cut it into pieces and it was then very easy to carve into the shape I needed.

For sculpting most of the doll, I've been using Premier Stone Clay, which Yoshida also recommends - it's much stronger than Paperclay or LaDoll. For smaller details such as facial features, I use LaDoll because it's more dense and easier to control.

 

Another change I made from Yoshida's instructions was to use drinking straws wrapped in tinfoil as the base for the arms and legs rather than styrofoam.  I found trying to carve the foam into pieces thin enough for limbs much too finicky, and by using straws I also don't have to worry about carving out the foam after the clay dries. (You do have to do this for the head and body, but it's easier with the larger pieces.) Below are the arms; in my next post, I'll include photos of a leg being made in stages. 

I haven't gotten the proportions exactly as I would have liked (the torso's a bit short, for example) but overall I'm quite happy with how my little Octavia is coming along and I realize that I built the construction of a BJD up in my head as this massive task, it hasn't been as daunting as I'd anticipated.  But maybe I'll change my tune when I start adding the joints and trying to string her together!  I'll be grouping all posts on Octavia under a single category in the sidebar; while they'll be a far cry from a proper tutorial, I'll try to document the process in as much detail as I can.