Needle and Clay

Okay, as I may have mentioned before, I’m becoming obsessed with the idea of jointed dolls. After looking at what a lot of other artists are doing, I concluded that it was going to be extremely difficult to figure out how to do Asian-style ball-jointed dolls without actually buying one to examine for myself. Since that’s out of the question in terms of budget, I had to figure something else out. You know what they say about necessity and invention…

So I went looking through my trusty Susannah Oroyan books, and discovered that one of them (Anatomy of a Doll) had a whole page about ball jointed cloth dolls. I had already been thinking about poseable cloth dolls, and the photos of Shelley Thornton’s work in the Oroyan book really inspired me.

So pictured above and throughout this post is my first attempt at a soft doll with ball joints. I know, it’s ugly. I chose to make it from felt because I like the way felt is firm, but slightly stretchy when you stuff it. There are a lot of things I like about the way this turned out, and some things I want to improve on.

Things I like:

1. The hip joints have a very natural movement to them. I don’t know if you can tell in any of the pictures, but the thighs actually angle inwards, just like in a real skeleton. The movement is a result of the bead being attached as a ball joint on one side and a hinge joint on the other. I would present this as evidence of my apparent genius, but it happened completely on accident.

2. The beads can be ball joints or hinge joints, depending on how you sew them in. I don’t think you can read my inspiring diagram above, (dang WordPress!) but suffice it to say that you make a ball joint by anchoring the thread as close to the center of the joint as possible, while you make a hinge joint by anchoring the thread on either side. The hinge joints are very firm, firm enough to hold their positions, especially in the arms.

3. The wooden beads add so much weight that I don’t think I would need to weight the butt of this doll to make it sit. It won’t sit unassisted, but that’s because the hip joints are too loose.

4. There are three movements to the head (turning left-to-right, tilting left-to-right, and tipping up or down). My first attempt at the neck resulted in a hinge joint with only up-and-down movement. I removed it and tried again, and now it moves in any direction but is too floppy to hold its position.

Some things I want to work on:

1. I’m pleased with how the hinge joints set into the soft parts of the doll, but the way I sewed the ball joints prevents them from sitting in that tight. There must be some way to develop sockets, so the ball joints would be firmer. I had hoped the doll might sit and stand on its own, but the hip joints are too floppy.

2. My husband laughed at me because I was fretting about the doll not having a bottom to speak of, but it’s actually an engineering concern. I wonder if a sculpted behind would allow the doll to sit after all, or if it would interfere with standing movements too much. I think future versions will have more sculptural torsos.

3. I’d really like to develop a skin I could slide over the construction to hide the joints. I thought about adding two skins so I could do some needlesculpting in between, but I don’t think I’ll bother for this doll. I’m tempted to add one skin layer, though, because I really want to see how this doll will look with clothing.

4. The arms are obviously way too long. It was hard to judge the proper length for the pieces while taking the length of the beads into account. When I get this thing perfected, I may need to use (horrors!) a pattern instead of just eyeballing the sizes I need every time.

5. I wonder how the size of the bead impacts the performance of the joint. Can I get away with smaller, less conspicuous beads, or will that limit movement? I can almost imagine a ball-and-rod setup for the hip joint, similar to the way actual femurs are shaped, but that’s probably more complicated than it needs to be for my purposes.

6. And finally, I’m already picturing how I can transfer what I’ve learned to a hard-medium doll. Woo hoo!

Here’s where I want some feedback from you, dear reader. Have you ever tried this before? If not, are you interested in trying it now? I’d really like to see what some collage-type doll artists could do with this — imagine decorative beads tied into the doll with ribbons — there’s a lot you could do with it. Leave a comment and a link to some pictures of your work.

Another doll artist, Maggie Iacono, makes felt dolls with ball joints for collectors. Her site says the fingers on her dolls are “poseable” but not that they’re jointed, so I wonder if they’re just wired. I have an idea for a jointing system for fingers, but it would be impossible in this tiny scale. Can anyone think of a use for a life-sized, fully poseable hand?

Oooh, I’m so excited, I couldn’t wait to show you what I found today! Marina Bychkova, whom I previously blogged about on these pages, has redesigned and updated her website, but even better than that, I’ve just discovered she has a DeviantArt account, and a blog! Check them all out, she has some amazing new work for you to see, and now you can follow her creative process on her blog. I love this artist!

P.S. Keep an eye out later today — I’ve been working on an experiment, and I’m going to post pictures. I hope it will be thought-provoking for all of my readers who make dolls. Stay tuned…

Here’s another needle felting tutorial: http://allbuttonedup.wordpress.com/2006/12/02/needle-felting-a-tutorial/

This is a different kind of felting, a more two-dimensional type. On my musty old list of “things to experiment with later” is the question of whether this type of needle felting could be used to create features on a cloth doll’s face. If anyone reading this has tried it, please leave a comment and let me know!

P.S. I just got back from the Brookside art show in Kansas City, and it was kind of disappointing. There weren’t nearly as many figurative artists as there were last year; in fact the entire show seemed smaller. Didn’t there used to be two big tents of artisans?

What do you do when you’re such a great sculptor that it’s no longer a challenge? You start playing with engineering, of course. That’s got to be the story behind today’s artist, Alexander Mergold.  Or maybe he’s just a brilliant puppeteer who also happens to be an incredibly talented sculptor. Either way, his work is really something to see.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an artist with such a huge variety of different pieces. His website includes marionettes, stick puppets, table top puppets, hand puppets, portrait dolls, caricatures, fantasy figures, and more. He works in air-dry clay, papier mache, polymer clay and epoxy putty. He even has a bas relief and a life-sized doll on his website. Wow.

The picture at the top of this post caused a double-take when I first saw it. If it weren’t for the marionette strings visible in the photo, I would have thought it was a real person. I also love his “Yawning Dude” piggy banks, which are available in his Etsy shop, as well as the soulful Pamina, pictured below, from his Magic Flute series. Would you have guessed both of these were by the same guy? Amazing.

Normally I don’t feature plushies, which is the modern term for “stuffed animals,” but this artist really caught my imagination.

Apparently based in Moscow, Taniusha Stepanian doesn’t have much of a web presence besides her Flickr account, but I recommend having a look at it. Her darling plushies and dolls are like ragged but much-loved toys made by little children out of the scraps from Mommy’s sewing table. Most of them are either needle-felted or sewn felt incorporating beads, buttons, wire and lace. She does have a few hard-media dolls, which appear to represent more than one style, perhaps as the artist has grown over the years.

What I love the most are the story-telling titles of each piece. At the top of this post is one called “A Tale About a Little Bear Learning to Fly,” and  below (on the left) is “Dreaming about Unicorns.”

Above is “The Cat’s House” and a detail showing all the tiny creatures Stepanian made to put in the cat’s pockets. Such lovely attention to detail. I wish I knew more about how they were constructed.

And these are her hard-media dolls. The ones above seem to be polymer clay and represent a more traditional style which reminds me a little of Italian puppets. The doll above on the right is called “Self-Portrait”.

Below are her more modern-styled dolls, which I find even more charming than the ones above. “RedHood” and “A Girl and Autumn” are their names. I love their little costumes!

I hope we hear more about this artist as her career continues. Have a great weekend, everyone!

I get why Wednesday Addams is so often represented by goth-type dollmakers, but I don’t really get Alice in Wonderland. I guess that could be because I’ve never read the book.

In any case, today I bring you a selection of gorgeous, dreamy, big eyed Wednesdays and Alices.

Joanna Thomas’ work has graced these pages before, but I have to mention her if I’m going to blog about Alice in Wonderland. Her devotion to this subject has produced at least three dreamy interpretations of Alice, each with Thomas’ exquisite expression and meticulous attention to detail.

Gail Lackey has been a big name in the doll scene for a while, and I think her Wednesday is the sweetest one I’ve seen. She has Lackey’s characteristic adorable face, but look at the detail in the headless doll’s costume. Gorgeous. (I don’t know if you can see this link without joining The Fairy Society, which you should do anyway, but it seems to be the biggest collection of Lackey’s work available online for now.)

I’ll bet you didn’t even know people did makeovers of My LIttle Ponies, but if DeviantArt is any indication, there’s a brisk trade in them. Lisa Stanley is a prolific My Little Pony artist, and her whimsical take on Wednesday Addams includes a perfectly competent headless doll with jointed arms and legs.

Michelle Bradshaw, aka Pixiwillow, deserves her own feature in this space someday. She’s probably best known for her fantastic dollhouse-scale fairies which sell on eBay for a lot more money than I can afford. Her interpretation of Alice in Wonderland’s trippy cast is just like the rest of her work: sensitively proportioned, unbelievably realistic for something so tiny, but, most importantly, beautiful.

Bradshaw has a Wednesday Addams, too:

“Let’s Play with Dolls,” it’s called. I love the slightly alarmed expression on the dolly’s face.

Have a great weekend!

One of the first artists I featured on this blog, Christi Friesen, has a new book coming out called Polymer Clay and Mixed Media: Together At Last. I, for one, can’t wait.

Check out my original post on Friesen, and visit her website for a sneak peek at some of the new stuff from her book.

One of the things I try to do on this blog is to provide every link I can find to a featured artist’s work. In that spirit, I’d like to report that Meredith Dittmar has added an Etsy shop and a Flickr page to her portfolio.

Enjoy!

Must… not… get… sucked in….!!!

I really, really don’t need a new hobby. Really, really don’t. In fact, fewer hobbies would probably make my life a lot easier. Needle felting is one of those things, though, that really, really tempts me. Argh.

Today I present to you a medley of excellent wool sculpture, also known as needle felting. I have selected these from Etsy because of their fine details and excellent sculptural qualities. I really have no idea how you start with a lump of wool and end up wih these awesome figures, but then, that’s what makes it so cool, right?

In literature, they have a term called “meta” which means a story that knows it’s a story, or a story within a story (Like the grandfather reading the book to the little boy in The Princess Bride). To my English-degreed mind, there’s something meta about a doll using a puppet. Go see this treasure at Snowman Central.

Gosh, this owl makes me giggle, and I love the vivid colors in the cat. You usually don’t see this color palette in needle felting. Go and see Fing’s other work at Fine Art Toys. She also has some gorgeous matryoshka-inspired ladybugs, flower buds and caterpillars.

I think one of the coolest things about needle felting is that it can blur the line between painting and sculpture, something that this artist is taking advantage of. The two sculptures above, “Mother Earth,” and “Mushroom Community” are from Handwork Naturals.

Last, but certainly not least, is Rose Thistle Arts from Etsy. She has the most amazing talent for sculpting lifelike animals in wool. I can’t even sculpt portraits in my primary medium, so I have a deep respect for anyone who can. Rose Thistle animals aren’t just lifelike, though, they’re also beautiful. Sometimes it’s easy to do one or the other, but not both. Just lovely.

See you next week!

I think I have a new hero.

Sometimes, I get a little depressed thinking about how jaded Americans are these days. When little kids listen to hip-hop and wear t-shirts that say “pre-sexy,” I wonder what kind of future they’ll have when there’s no innocence in their pasts. Maddy Nupp McDonald attracted my attention because she appeared to be someone who was bucking this trend. Then I read her website, and realized she isn’t just bucking a trend, she’s trying to create a new one. Here’s what she says on her eBay profile:

“When I started my Chibis From Kiki Valley theme, I thought to myself, that I realized that I wasn’t the only person who had a childhood that was cut short. I decided that chibis would be made for adults, not children. They would exude love and innocence. None of my stories would have a dark side. No worries, no unhappiness, all with safety and love. “

I had assumed that since “Chibi” is a term used by Japanese Anime fans to refer to something little and cute, McDonald was selling her adorable work to teens and young adults in the anime/manga/bjd crowd. That doesn’t seem to be the case. On her website she unabashedly declares her intentions to sell toys to grown women. “I really love the idea of a woman, who’s just had a tiring day at work with a gronky boss, and maybe a husband who’s too tired to talk, coming home and finding one of my packages waiting for them, with all the childish goofy stickers, and silly stories, and finally a sweet little lovable goober to look at them, say I love you, and not break their purse,” she says in her blog profile.

Now, of course, it was her work that interested me in the first place. Her chibis (which are slightly reminiscent of Amber Matthies and Christie Friesen’s work) are heart-meltingly adorable without being saccharine. It would probably be enough that they are perfectly proportioned to trigger that “must-love-baby” instinct, but these figures also possess complicated anatomies and coloring that make them real hand-made works of art. McDonald seems to go heavy on the metallic Pearl-ex powders, which is okay with me (shiiiiny!). Most of the chibis also come with accessories, like straw hats or drinks with straws in them, and detailed environments, to encourage the buyer to play with her new little friends.

I’m a terrible photographer, so I’m really impressed by people who take good pictures of their work, but McDonald takes it a step further than that by creating animated videos of her figures telling their personal stories.

The pictures I’m using here aren’t going to do her work any justice at all, so head on over to her website, espiritglen, and be sure to visit her video page (with the sound on!) the next time you’re feeling a little frazzled.

I’m converted, Maddy. Keep spreading the word!

Judy Skeel is one of those artists who has probably tried nearly everything at least once. After fifteen years of dollmaking, she has focused her art into a style that is colorful, charming, whimsical and sometimes fierce. In addition to her work as a dollmaker, she is a popular dollmaking instructor and produces a newsletter highlighting doll clubs and events.

I really like her artist statement, so I’ll quote it here:

“There is nothing more rewarding to me than creating something that speaks. When I create art of my own design I begin with an idea and let the process and the work itself tell me where it wants to go. I allow the art to take over, as if it were my subconscious, pulling from deep within me. When I complete a piece in this manner not only do I feel the ecstasy of completion; I also am enchanted by the creation. In some way, any new creation for me connects me to God as I begin to understand what joy He must savor in creating His works. I see my work as my children, and often find it difficult to let them go off into the world and speak for themselves. I wonder if the world will understand them as I do if I am not there to share for them. I must remind myself that just as in parenting, if we create and instill the concepts we require our children to have, when they go on their own our efforts will shine through for anyone that sincerely looks at our work.
When you view my work all I ask is that you view it with sincerity and an open mind, and then I believe that my art will speak to you as it does to me.”

Take note of the way she styles the faces of her dolls, using a skillful combination of needle sculpting and painting. Additionally, every doll she makes just drips with beading, ribbon embroidery, machine embroidery and other textile techniques. These pictures probably don’t do them any justice at all.

If you really want to know what’s going on in the dollmaking scene, check out her newsletter, The Association for People Who Play With Dolls (APWPWD), and be sure to check her schedule to see if she’s attending any events near you. You can also get to know Skeel better by reading her blog or dropping her an e-mail at her website.