Studio Stuff

This week I have been moving my studio back upstairs and I am almost done. So that means I will be back to my sculpting soon. I absolutely love my studio. Scott built it when he added on the new dining room and it get so much good light and is really big....you can never have too much room in your studio.

I also have been the 911 dispatcher this last week and for some reason that just wears me out. Any late night calls leaves tired for days. I don't know if it is the loss of sleep or the stress of the call....and in 30 years of doing this I still haven't figured it out....but I am still doing it.

I will take pictures of my studio and post them later.....that is if....I can get it to look uncluttered.

Spring Cleaning

Well it has to be done...today I am doing inside windows.. and mirrors. Always makes me feel better. Also gives me time to think about what I will do with some of the art pieces I have in the works. Planning while working.'

The weather is a warm 39*...no rain yet. But rain would be welcome and melt the snow faster.

Rethinking

Ok...all that work and today I am not at all happy with it. So I ripped it apart.....oh I hate sleeping on it and then changing my mind. But....maybe something better will happen....I think...maybe a tree topper for the Christmas tree......oh.....help!

Here is what I have done today....worked on the face a bit. I may have to do it over but it gives me an idea of what I am heading towards. I need to fix one of the eyes. I see it isn't fully round. The brown part didn't make the circle. It also needs an iris and a second lighter color of brown. Time to quit for today. And make dinner.

Thursday Project

Here is the mystic I am working on...I say mystic because I don't think I will make her in to a fairy with wings....she just doesn't seem to be going in that direction.

Anyway...I seem to have her balanced....but still need more weight at the bottom. I will think on that and see what I can come up with. In the mean time here are the photos of where I am with the work....WIP..work in progress.

March 18, 2010

Grey, rain, wind and snow.....a great March day. I am going to try to make a base for my sculpt with the broken neck....I glued 4 kabob sticks to the base to give it sturdiness and height....and wrapped the base with tinfoil... The next thing I will do is wrap it in tinfoil wider at the bottom for balance...that is the trick...."balance".... I'll post pictures on how that looks this afternoon.

Beautiful Seldovia Day

Today is one of those "Just another day in Paradise" day. So beautiful and calm and 33*...no snow, no wind and clear skies.

Here is a picture of my small dragons that I have been making out of my left over or dirty clay....I have painted them and put a clear coat of sealer on to protect the paint.

I love these kind of days....there is so much promise of spring.

Today is my daughter Stephanie's birthday....she is my shamrock child...a wild irish blond.

Happy Birthday Stephanie..hope you have a GREAT Birthday.

I am going to start two new sculpts today....one large and small....hope they turn out.

My brother, Todd, just went down to work on the boat, they are getting ready to go out and fish cod fish or halibut...I don't know which one..maybe both.....long lining.

I am listening to "Prodigal Summer"...pretty good book on tape.

Fixed Neck

This is what it looks like now. But I have not hard baked her....I will do that today. She has a wooden rod...actually a kabob stick...don't tell the teacher...inside. I am not sure at this time how to do the bottom torso...hmmmm....but I will think on it. No color scheme yet either...but I still have some silk I can dye.

I had loose wires inside my sculpt and when I laid her down the neck cracked. She was not hard baked..just lightly to hold the face form.

Color of silk and suede

Here are better pictures of the hand dyed silk scarf and garment suede with the trim that Roxi picked out.

How they start. March 16, 2010

My sculpts start as wire armatures. I got some 16 gauge wire from our local gas station and cut it in to a 32 inch piece which I bent in half for the center(backbone) of my sculpture. She will be a fairy, sculpted in the Wendy Froud style...16 inches tall. Pretty weird looking aren't they. They(the wire armatures) have tin foil cores
( head and chest) and then are wrapped with the white florists tape. For one one thing so that the wire and tin foil do not react with the clay and to give the clay something to grip when it is fired in the oven. It also uses less clay...which is nice considering the price of the clay.....

Here are two sculpts that I have in process right now. One is for a friend who does so much for her family and the other is just for me to practice....maybe if it is good I will have it up for sale....maybe.

Works In Progress(WIP's)

Good Morning, I can not believe it has been so long since I posted here. Well it shows how busy my life got for awhile.

Life in the "Village" has been very cold with blizzard conditions for about a week. Which means no mail, no groceries, no travel....no nothin'.

But here are some sculpts that I got done...so being isolated has some "good points".

I have been working on a Wendy Froud type sculpt. It is a free online workshop offered by the polymer clay group that I belong to. Here is what I am working on for that and where I am right now.I hope that I can get the rest of the body to look correct in the proportions. It is going to have a wire armature and a cloth body with sculpted hands and feet. I hand dyed some silk that I had left over from a silk painting workshop .....I dyed it to perfectly match the piece of garment suede I found in my beading stash from making beaded check book covers. Here is the picture of the trim, the suede and the silk in a plastic bag...not the best pictures but it give an idea of what direction I am going. Roxi came and picked out the suede and then I dyed the silk scarf to match.

I still need to sculpt the hands and feet and put some color on the face ...oh yes! and bake the clay. This will be Roxi's doll as it is my first one and she is an avid doll collector.

I also sculpted a second torso for another doll but broke the neck and had to repair it. She has a straight neck rather then the nicely curving pose of the first but that is the learning process.