Another wonderful doll artist!

Well I kind of knew I wouldn't get back as soon as I had hoped...BUT I found another wonderful doll artist, and I'd like to share her talents with you. Her name is Amanda DiVirgilio and she lives halfway across the world from me, judging by her accent in one of the video tutorials. :-)  Amanda created www.dollmakersdream.com  - a site with some really great tutorials for creating one of a kind art dolls in polymer clay. Please go visit her site, she's incredibly talented and so generous in taking the time and energy to make these tutorials so the rest of us don't have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Here's the link directly to her tutorials: Doll Maker's Dream Free-polymer-clay-tutorials.
Without artists like Amanda And Moriah Betterly at MLBetterly.blogspot.com, the rest of us doll artists would be spending a lot more time on research, and a lot less time on the fun stuff! Thanks to both of these generous souls...
Lily/Ruth

Mad Mouton - pics in progress...

Hello again!

I promised you in my last post that I would post the next day about one of my newest projects: a cranky little black and white (or will be after I paint him) sheep named Mad Mouton. Mad because I'm a bit tired of smiling snowmen, and 'Mouton' because it's the French word for sheep (singular and plural) and most anything sounds better in French!

So...here are some bad photos in chronological order of the process creation:

This is his head without eyebrows and topknot. Hm...he looks a bit more scared than irritated, I think.

(his eyes are 10 mil glass doll eyes)

He is made of paperclay over a styrofoam ball. This next stage is adding the rest of the face and ears...now he's looking irritated. ;-)...

and stamping swirls onto his body (boy am I gonna do that in two separate steps next time; kept squishing the stamped texture. :-(

adding his legs and front feet...

(This is next to another snowman;
Mouton is mad because I took the pic before
I finished his back hooves. Such a drama queen!)

At this point all three of them turned their backs on me, the ingrates! But that's okay because you can see his sassy new tail!

Tomorrow I'm gonna upload the pic with his new paint job...and then I'll need opinions on the color scheme. I'm not sure I like it yet. 

Nightie night! 

I'm Back!

Hello! I have been horrendously bad about writing my own blog, but now that I'm trying some 3 dimentional work and have some photos, I can post some stuff online...:-)

I'll start with some of my seasonal work in progress - my new line of snowmen characters.

I'd like to thank Moriah Betterly at MLB Studios http://mlbetterly.blogspot.com/ for kicking off my interest in this magical medium of paper clay. I was using polymer clay for my wall hanging spirit dolls, but I prefer this air-dry clay for my  3-D figures.

Thanks Moriah, and congrats on your publication in Art Doll Quarterly; great job! You know I love your work, even though you haven't heard from me in a year! LOL!


Here are some WIP pics:

This is my first snowman character. He is made of paper clay, over a styrofoam ball and wire armature. His hat is a wooden drawer pull with bells hanging from wires coming out the top. He stands in paper clay snow, on a star-shaped box which has been painted red and embossed with gold stars. He is holding a miniature snowman, and a friend of mine, Sandy Arieno, crocheted him a sporty looking red scarf to keep him warm!

This is another of my snowmen. I haven't had a chance to antique him yet...:-(
He is on a wooden base covered in paper clay/styrofoam ball-shaped snow drifts, and is juggling glass beads and a red heart (which are all magically staying in the air thanks to wire and glue! (sorry about the bad quality pics; haven't had a chance to take good ones yet). You can't see it well in this pic, but his belly has been stamped with a heart shape that I've painted glossy red! :-) His gloves will be red too, and I think I'll add some beads on the snows to look like he's dropped them.

Hugs all! Tomorrow I'll be adding pics of another snowman, and also some pics of my latest project, Mad Mouton, who is an irritated sheep. He's really cute when he's mad!

Ruth

Just found a lovely new doll artist!

Her blog is called MLB Studios and here's the link: http://mlbetterly.blogspot.com/ . I really love her 2D paintings and 3D art dolls. She teaches on-line workshops and has video tutorials on her site as well. There's a great one about a Paperclay doll, and many others as well. Please go see!
Ruth

Just got the spring issue of Art Doll Quarterly!

Really enjoyed the hand sculpted faces of Ruth Morris' t'Kungee dolls and her detailed description on how to sculpt them with polymer clay (it should be clear to you by now how I feel about polymer clay...;-)
Also liked Daryel Cook's Sufficient Phaeton. He also had a wonderful piece last year on the cover of ADQ called the Sentinal of Winter. Enjoyed Karin Otto-Burfict's Memory dolls (I love dolls with stuff in side them!) and admired Marylin Radzat's doll so much I went at looked at her website (for the second time!).
But I was especially impressed with the stuffed and painted dolls by Monique Savoie. Those dolls are extremely well painted; lots of character in their expressions. Really stopped me in my tracks when I turned the page to see them the first time. Go Genevieve (her daughter who talked her into painting the dolls)! I liked the whole issue as usual, of course, but these artist's work stood out for me the most.
I also discovered a new doll club starting up in my area in the back of ADQ, thank you, ADQ! Love this Magazine; it's always very inspiring.
Oh well, off to my sister's house to make deviled eggs for the Super Bowl this afternoon. Proud to say I love it for the commercials and the company...:-)

Lily

Yaaaaayyy!

Omigod, omigod, omigod!!! I'm actually sitting at Borders drinking Pelegrino and surfing the web on my tiny Netbook! I've been having trouble accessing on-line at other places until I spent an hour and a half  on the phone with Qwest this am, and got it all straightened out...either that or it was the most recent WLAN update. Who cares - I'm ON!
Yeah, I know...pathetic really...so far behind the times. WHATEVER! :-)

Happy day!
Lily

My passion for art dolls and OOAK (one of a kind) dolls/critters never ceases to amaze me. I pour through magazines like Art Doll Quarterly and Somerset Studio as if I'm starving and they feed me. Well, actually they do...they feed my creativity! I've started this blog to see if my work makes other's passionate too.
My pieces are primarily polymer clay, glass beads, jewelry findings, and natural objects such as leather, feathers, and twigs.
 These art dolls are meant to be hung on the wall near your favorite work space to be a creativity muse.
Enjoy! I'll be posting again soon with some news, I hope, so cross your fingers and wish me luck...:-)
Ruth