Black-Eyed Suzie Art Dolls and Oddities

My First Stop Motion Animation

Life has been a bit mad around here (do I start every post that way? I can't remember anymore...)  Last week, I had a 10-page final translation project due and M. and I were both sick.  I managed to finish, and I'm so deeply relieved to be done with my class.  Interesting as it was, it was so much work and it left me very little time for my much-loved activity of stuff-making, as every time M. took a nap, I was racing to finish translation assignments.  I'm thinking that I won't continue my Translation degree (Mr. L will, however - do we really both need the exact same degree?) so that I have more time for writing and doll-making. This weekend, we also had a little birthday party for M., which was so much fun and a little emotional for me as I can't quite believe my sweet little baby is already a year old.

I'm still chipping away at my most recent group of dolls, but during my crazy week, I came to terms with the fact I won't be able to finish them in time to mail them out before Christmas unless I pull a few all nighters, something neither my eyes nor my sanity can withstand these days.  I do apologize if anyone was planning to buy a doll as a gift, but I can't bring myself to spend so much time on the sculpting and eye-making just to rush through constructing the costumes and wigs.  And the dolls won't stand for it!

Even though they're coming along slowly, I'm really happy with the faces and the new eyes have turned out.  I'm officially in love with glass.          

Over the weekend, I put together a very brief stop motion animation with the ball-jointed doll I made last summer and a small, antique porcelain doll head given to me by my dear friend Sue.  It's my first try and quite primitive at that, but I thought I'd share it here. Even though I made lots of newbie mistakes, it was fun to play around with and exciting to find out I can do this with just my camera and my laptop.  I used iMovie and this very simple tutorial.

Glass Eyes & Shrunken Heads

I've finally finished sculpting the heads for my most recent batch of dolls, which means I can start to sand and paint them and then assemble the bodies.  Painting is my favourite part - it's when the character really emerges.  And then the clothes, which is my second favourite part... I think I might have to postpone my plans to make Alexander McQueen-inspired clothing; I want to at least try to do him justice, and I'm running out of time to finish these dolls before Christmas. But I will definitely get there - I ordered the book Savage Beauty and was once again taken aback by his exquisite designs.

If you look closely at these photos (sorry - not my best!) you might be able to see that I used my own glass eyes!  I'm so excited about these.  They are still quite irregular - each one is different from the next - but I think it somehow suits my dolls, which are far from symmetrical.

Anyway, I'll be sure to get really good photos once they're done so that the detail of the eyes can be seen.  I feel like I'm finally getting closer to making what I see in my mind's eye, which means it's taken me over 5 years just to get close.  Practising patience...

Bits and Pieces

I finally feel like I'm making some progress with my latest batch of dolls, even though it's been ever so slow.  But almost all the parts have been made and varnished and the assembly line i underway.

Some dainty feet and legs with real stockings...

I came up with a new technique for hands and am finally very happy with how they've turned out.  It's very time-consuming, but worth it, I think.

The heads are still missing their faces (spooky!) because out of the most recent batch of eyes I made, only one turned out well enough to use.  I'm going back to the glass studio this week to make more; I have to remind myself that it's okay to be bad at something in the beginning and that I will get better with practice, but I'm frustrated that I have so little control over this medium.

My translation class has turned out to be rather grueling, but I'm hoping to have these ladies ready in early December...gotta go string some legs together!

 

The Evolution of a Glass Eye

In my last post I mentioned a mysterious workshop I was slated to take last weekend...it was flameworking! Also known as lampwork and torchwork, it basically involves working with rods or tubes of glass over a small, table-top torch.  The workshop was so fascinating, but because I'm still waking up several times a night to feed my dear one, I managed to forget my camera both days.  Here are shots of the various stages of my attempts at glass eyes taken at home:

Here we have the victims of thermal shock (eyes that cooled down too quickly, causing them to crack).

And some other early disasters...

 

Getting there, but still mostly heinous.

Closer...(the two on the far right were made by the very nice instructor, Gérard, who had never made eyes before but made two beautiful ones right out of the gate).

Ah!  It's amazing what you can learn in a single weekend.  While these are far from perfect, it's not really perfection that I'm aiming for.  I love the little irregularities, and the fact that molten glass is a medium that you can't entirely predict.   The way the different colours swirl and combine isn't something you can control, so each one is unique. By the end of the course, I actually came close to making the kind of eyes I would have to pay a pretty penny for if I were to order them for my dolls.

Because I forgot my camera, these are not my arms, but just a shot to give you an idea of what the set-up looks like.

 

Getting set up to do flamework in one's own home is quite expensive, and I'm not crazy about the idea of having tanks of explosive gases in my apartment!  But I can go to the studio where I took the course and rent their facilities, so I will definitely get there when I can.  At the slow rate I'm going with dolls, I hope to have my own glass eyes in the next batch of dolls that come after the ballerinas.  

Speaking of the ballerinas, I apologize to anyone who's hoping to adopt one - they're taking me longer than I'd planned. I'm hoping to finish them up in the next two weeks.

 

Learning to Be, Letting Go of to Do

Fundamentally, I've always been a pretty lazy, selfish and somewhat melancholic person.  I like to stare out of windows and contemplate memory while listening to depressing folk music and tuning out much of the world. But I also fear getting to the end of my life and realizing that I didn't try hard enough, so the last few years have been busy for me.  I got a Master's degree, started a second, wrote a novel and started my own business.  I took great pleasure in writing long 'To Do' lists and crossing off each item.  These days, if I  clean the bathroom or get to the post office and mail a single letter, it feels like a big accomplishment. These days, I'm learning to be with my beautiful baby boy and not get anxious if little else gets done in a day.  I'm learning many things:

That tracing the outline of his nose and watching him while he sleeps is more important than finishing the laundry.

That making him laugh his so much better than keeping on top of emails and housework.

That I'm not as selfish and lazy as I always believed myself to be. 

That I can be simultaneously more exhausted and happier than ever before.

So very tired.  So very grateful.

On a more prosaic note, I am still making (very slow) progress on my Swan Lake dolls.  Mr. L has had a promotion at work, which is great except that is has meant that for the past several weeks he has had to work weekends as well as during the week.  Also, I ordered some supplies especially for these dolls that never showed up, so it looks like I'll have to order them again.  And in the evenings, when the babe is finally asleep and dinner has been made and eaten and general tidying is done, it can be pretty hard to get motivated to sit and focus on the construction of very tiny things.  All this is conspiring against the timely completion poor little swans!

But at least now they all have handmade paper bodices (so pretty - why didn't I do this earlier?) and most have tutus.  The tutus are epic - each one took hours - but I think the effect is much nicer than just making a gathered skirt, which is what I had planned to do before I found the technique for the style seen above. I won't get to finish them this weekend, because I'm taking a top-secret workshop.  But I'm hoping I'll be allowed to take photos and all will be revealed in my next post.  At very least, I'll have photos of what I'm going to be learning to make...

 

Doll Swans

Several of you guessed right away that I was referring to the movie Black Swan in my last post as that which has inspired my latest dolls.  When it was listed as an Academy Award Nominee, it was given the category 'ballet psychodrama' - how could it not be great?  It's quite absurd and over the top in some ways, but if you surrender to the melodrama, it's thoroughly awesome.  I didn't like Aranofsky's filmmaking style when dealing with heroin addiction in  Requiem for a Dream - a dark, heavy subject matter treated in such a heavy-handed, melodramatic way - it felt too self-serious and relentlessly punishing. But that style coupled with ballet as the subject matter - somehow the contrast was really appealing.

The ballerina dolls are coming along slowly.  I don't know if I'll have them done by the end of April as I'd hoped - my little monkey has had a few very rough nights sleep-wise, so I've been forcing myself to go to bed early rather than work on dolls so that I'm not a complete wreck. But I've really enjoyed spending more time on the faces, and I've made real pointe shoes for each doll.  I use silk for the slipper and sole and silk embroidery ribbon for the ties.

 
They literally take about 10-15 times longer to make than a painted shoe, but I think it's worth it.  For ballerinas, aren't shoes half the point?  (Oh, bad pun! NOT intended.)  I'm sorry for the quality of the photos - I didn't have time to get my macro lens out, but I'll be sure to get some better shots once the dolls are finished.

Dance Me to the End of Love

 I was quite excited to finish sculpting the faces of my five most recent dolls this weekend.  I hope to have them finished by late April, with an update following shortly thereafter, but of course it's more up to my dear little M. than it is to me.  He is a champion micro-napper - 30 to 40 minutes at a time - so mostly I work on dolls in the evenings after he's gone to sleep for the night. 

I decided to make five larger dolls this time around, rather than 8-10 smaller ones.  The smaller ones were fun, but I was starting to miss the greater involvement of a larger doll, and the detail in sculpting and costuming that are hard to achieve in the very small scale.  Sculpting the faces and making each one truly distinct from the others has been my favourite aspect of this latest batch. You might have noticed that the eyes are smaller than usual on these dolls; I thought it might be interesting to play around with proportion a little. Unfortunately, it's very overcast here today so these photos aren't great, but they'll  give you a rough idea.

Although there will only be five dolls available this time around, they do share a theme; it was inspired by a movie that came out last year that I particularly loved.  I'm sure most of you who follow my blog can guess - you probably know my tastes by now!  But here's a big clue, just in case...

Legless, with Dresses

Thank you to everyone who offered sympathy and advice for my back woes - I've been much more careful lately, and doing more stretches, sun salutations and swimming (a little alliteration, all?) which have definitely helped.  And though I promise I'm no longer being careless, I have been working away quite hard on my Alices, as I really want this update to be my biggest and best.  There are reasons for this which will be revealed shortly, but for now I must remain cryptic... My last post was so crusty, and with such, sad, anemic little photos that I decided I had to post some better ones.

 

You might remember a post from a few weeks ago about some lovely vintage fabric I acquired: gorgeous candy-coloured silks, mostly organza.  I think I might have to convert almost exclusively to silk organza; it's crisp yet soft, and holds creases, pleats and shaping so beautifully, and it's very pleasant to sew.

 

I've also given these dolls underskirts with ruffles, and continued to include lots of texturing in the fabric, which I'm discovering is so much more fun than trying to work from a pattern. So my  Alices are turning out to be quite frothy little confections; I never used to like pastel colours, but I love these, and whenever I walk into my little studio, it feels light and airy and sweet as marshmallow.

I'm also working on some larger dolls, but they are still mostly just detached heads, torsos and arms, so I'll have more photos of them as I progress.  I hope all have a ruffly, candy-coloured week!

   

Baby Alices & Uncooperative Spines

Just a shortish post today as I'm all propped in bed on pillows with my heating pad trying to tame my angry back.  My back is angry at me because I spend 2-3 hours each morning typing, then I sit hunched over tiny body parts as I sculpt, sand, paint and varnish 15 Alice dolls into submission, not to mention a few other of the many great characters in Wonderland. My back says I'm being abusive; I try to cajole it by going swimming a few times a week - doesn't that count for anything?  My back stamps its vertebrae and says, No!  Stretch me, you damn selfish woman!

Ha! says I - I  I don't have time to stretch. So here we are - selfish back is on strike and we both have to waste time lying around as a result.  I'm concerned about all the bald, unclothed Alice-babies...they demand much of us.

It would be quite dull for both you and me if I were to produce fifteen blonde Alices wearing little blue dresses, so I've decided to experiment with colouring and clothing, but retain two unifying features for each doll so that they remain identifiably 'Alice':  her classic striped stockings (I think all those fussbudgety little rings are what did me in, spine-wise) and her hairband.

I wish I had more work-in-progress photos to share, but the light was low and cast a rather sickly-looking blue tint on everything and in my crabby state, I decided they were almost all too horrible to share.  I promise to be back soon with better photos and in a better mood.

Here and There

Sometimes I feel like posting but then realize that I don't have an idea in my head!  Bad news for someone whose living is dependent upon ideas, but I'm sure something will come to me soon enough.  So forgive me if this post is a bit rambly and unfocused - it will be just be one of those "what I'm up to" posts, which I guess is what this blog is all about really.

I have several new dollies on the go, in various states of completion and undress.  Some have legs but no  clothes, some of dresses but no arms; all are feeling the chill of baldness.

Those with dresses are being quite cruel to the ones still nude; they've taken to sitting on their very own shelf, sneering and making all manner of insensitive remarks about how even old burlap bags would be easier on the eyes than the sight of those naked, knobbly knees.  Girls can be so horrible.

But then of course, the problem with hierarchies is no matter who you mistreat to get a leg up, there's always someone else's boot heel above you. My china dolls, all decked out in their finery and full heads of hair think these little bald upstarts are no better than they should be.  

 

They sit on the shelves above and scoff, "We could step on you and make another just like you".  I plead for peace but it's every doll for herself.  I've caught them kicking one another in ankles, but least I don't have to worry about too much hair-pulling. 

 

Whew - so much drama.  Before I break up any more squabbles, I'd like to give a shout out to my friend Kiki, who has just opened her very own Etsy shop.  Kiki gives new life to old things by repainting,  decorating and personalizing them.  Behold this lovely little cabinet - doesn't it look like the perfect place to lock up a bunch of brawling dollies?

 

Lastly, on a sad note, I'm praying for all the people of Haiti; Montreal has the largest Haitian population outside Haiti, so I'm also thinking of all those here who are grieving.  If there are any Canadians reading, here is a web page outlining the government's pledge to match all donations made by Canadians to registered humanitarian charities; this way, in donating whatever amount you can, it's really as if you're giving double the amount.   I'm planning to dedicate the proceeds of a sale from my next update to Doctors Without Borders, and I'll be sure to announce which doll it will be ahead of time.