Experimenting with mermaid shapes

While I rather liked the over all shape of the first collage mermaid, it was too difficult to turn inside out and was all around just uncooperative (mermaids are sometimes like that). I started experimenting with different shapes and finally found one that was easy to handle and looked good as well. The pinkish colored mermaid has a nice shape, which I might just change a wee little bit, but in over all I am pleased with this one.

So I got a little distracted....

While I should be working with my large collage parts I happened upon all these little collage "Head parts". Couldn't help myself and made up a little mermaid. She's about 9" X 15". I love the citrus colors even though it isn't very mermaid like. As always, it's far too much work for what I could ask. People in general aren't willing to pay for the time it takes to do all the bead work and embellishment. Could save a lot of time by just gluing everything on, but I just couldn't lower myself to that. I take too much pride in quality workmanship. Click the image of the mermaid to enlarge and view the detail.

Now we are starting to get somewhere!

It has taken weeks and weeks to get to this point with these new collage figures, although it may not appear that way according to this Blog. There has been a lot of time in between each stage of this construction. These are the first painted parts I have and from here I will, through a lot of trial and error design the body pattern. I will begin with correct body proportions and work from there. It will change a lot from this point as I am not trying to make a perfectly anatomical figure, this is a doll after all. I will keep tweaking the body parts until they look and feel right according to the figure itself. I think that I shall make a painted cloth body for the doll, but quite honestly I really haven't a clue as to how it will be embellished further. Usually, I will make sketches and have a vague idea of what I want the finished product to look like. But rarely does it turn out that way. The real beauty of all of this is that they seem to develop a life of their own at some point and the end results are quite a surprise, even to me ... I just love what I do.

Tiny Butterfly book

Made this wonderful tiny Butterfly book in a meeting with MIABA in Ann Arbor yesterday. It's a mere 3 1/2" tall.


For more butterfly book pictures, go to this link

http://ingriddijkers.com/galleryaltbookspage11.html

Finally, a firing!

Finally, I have all the "parts" poured, dried and was able to fire. Seems to have taken forever to fill up the kiln this time. Grant it I have an awful lot of small parts which are more time consuming to pour and get enough quantity to fill the kiln, but there have been so many interruptions lately. I just can't seem to produce the quantity as quickly as I used to. Everything seems to be moving in slow motion. This is really frustrating as I am normally such a fast worker. Well, hopefully this will change. I am very excited to get working with these new parts and start on the collage dolls. I have sketches and plans as to how to handle them, but of course that always changes and they'll end up VERY different from what I had originally envisioned. I made an error on the size of the faces I had printed up, so I will have to change those and make another trip up to the printer. I'll try to get that done tomorrow. I'll also start making the patterns for the legs arms and body. I haven't done that as of yet. The "parts" shrink considerably from the original piece to the final fired piece. Not by a great deal, but enough to throw off the proportions, if I'd made the cloth body parts earlier. Haven't quite decided what to fill the dolls with yet. I like weight to a doll. Since these will be a smallish doll (for my standards anyways) I'm thinking of adding some sort of pellets to the fiber fill stuffing to add a bit of weight.