...working on faces....

If I can get some pin dolls ready and shipped away on time...I can play in a pin doll swap..... this is as far as I am....they must be in Alaska by Sept 17......... ackkkkkk!

Button Babe face

Been working a bit on a new face... one of the larger 2.5 inch buttons again...I really like that size because there is more area to work on the eye colouring... you can see how I start....lots of doodling and trying to get an eye I like...then cover the button with a nice colour fabric...and begin to draw the features on there. Then... colouring and now...choosing some hair or fabric for a fancy hat or,,,,,, something.....










...leaning towards something like this to go with the vintage look of the face.... I'm pretending she is a famous movie star.....

The "How to" of a Button Babe...

Cabinets for the laundry room are being constructed today... but my hands are not needed for each and every step.. so, while I wait for the "okay... I need you now" call.... I usually do some cleaning, baking or playing.. today I chose play.

Thought I would make another Button Babe ... and I do use buttons for the heads.

This is smaller than the last one I drew and picci'd which was a huge button at 2.5 inches. I prefer the larger ones because there is so much more "eye" to play with on the larger faces. I love playing with a lot of colours to get a pretty eye.










1.5 inch self cover button. Pale shell pink polyster fabric that is satiny on one side and crepe on the other... I'm using the crepe side.










Cut a circle of pretty much any fabric you like for a face colour. However, check with some light strokes of your pigma pen to see if the fabric lets the ink bleed too easily... slightly is not a big problem..you just have to do lighter strokes and wait for it to dry before moving on.










You can use either pencil or some type of disappearing pen to draw the main lines of your face. I prefer pencil... probably because that's what I used to make my first one. Creature of habit, me. Then... when you are happy with the look of the face, go over the pencil lines with a very light stroke, using .005 brown Pigma pen. When it is dry... I use a soft white eraser to remove the pencil. You can even use slightly less detail than I have here...it does make it a bit easier to cover some errors or to help to resize eyes ..things like that. Invariably I get one eye larger than the other...and quite honestly, sometimes my own eye doesn't really pick up on it til I take a pic and look at it on here. It is glaring in a photo where as we don't always notice some of the tiny differences with our own eye . I may go over some of the brown pen strokes, but will wait til later in the colouring to do it... you can do it whenever you like or not bother.










For the colour I'm using Derwent water colour pencils. There are several different brand names available. I colour in the complete iris with my lightest shade of whatever colour I choose... in this case Water Green. I always have to put some lipstick on right away... a girl can't be seen in public without it right? ..but that is just me..you can do it whenever you like. ... Rose Madder Lake, to which I will add some Crimson Lake later in the process.










Another thing I find strange is that in a photo I can clearly see the grain of the fabric... in real life... hardly noticeable at all.










Now I add some Emerald Green to the side of the eye that I am going to pretend is the furthest away from my light source. If the sun or a light were shining on her right side, the left would appear to be a bit more shadowy... or slightly darker. Put the darker colour on the top portion of the iris and down to where the pupil will be... and along the left edge of the iris ... I almost cover the left half of my iris.










I add a bit of the darker green colour or one a shade darker yet...Mineral Green to the outline of my iris... covering or using the brown pigma lines...sometimes they even smudge a bit as I draw over them, which I think looks fine.. I don't mind if the line is not hard and delineated. It is a bit difficult to tell...but I also add a bit of the mid green colour just beneath the pigma line of the upper eyelid where it meets the white portion of the eye. It is like making a slight shadow beneath the lid...it adds a bit and continues with the colour you have chosen. You can see I have also been playing with my white pencil in some areas of my iris. If I decide I want it lighter in some areas..I like to use my white to lighten.. I also now use the white pencil on the whites of the eyes ... this can even help to enlarge some small area ... or make smaller other areas where I may have over coloured or made a bit of a mess. My white hardly shows up when shading... so I end up licking it a bit sometimes when I want something really white.










Use a very sharp Burnt Umber ('specially on tiny eyes) or even a light line with black pigma pen .005 to darken the upper eyelid line. I like to draw in my pupil at this point using a black pigma pen......but most people leave it til much later. I like to work with it there... to play around it with my colours.... but it probably is easier to leave it til the end. I find I can even draw out some very fine lines (with my very sharp coloured pencils ) from the black pigma pen used for the pupils...instead of having to draw them in later.










Outline the lower lid with brown pigma pen .005 , beginning slightly away from the actual corner of the eye. Close to where the iris begins...










Shade down the sides of the nose with a colour that blends nicely with the colour of fabric you have chosen. I began with a colour slightly darker than shell pink... Pink Madder Lake, then reinforced it by going to a darker shade... a light reddish brown called Venetian Red... I also begin to add some shading around the eyes and darken the nostrils with brown pigma pen.










Darken the pupil... add eyelashes (for a light face and lighter eyes I usually use a brown pigma pen...for darker skin and eyes...black eyelashes... and now is when I might put in some fine lines radiating out from the pupil like the spokes of a wheel... again...brown pigma pen for lighter eyes or even darkest iris colour using a very sharp pencil... black pigma pen for darker eyes.

Continue refining and adding a bit more shading ...I like to use pictures of catalogue models to help with the shadows.










.... am still playing with a bit darker green, Mineral Green and a greenish blue called Jade Green as well as some Blue Gray at the tops of the iris...and following the line of the upper eyelid when it meets the whites. This is an opportunity to continue with recontouring to make sure the eyes are the same size.




















Some more shading with pinks and reds for cheeks... add white highlights to the pupils... even a bit more in an area where you may see a bit of shine from a light.... how about an area on the bottom lip to make it look like it glistens....










.... and....here she is! after a bit more playing .... smoothed, made up and ready to go....

I want to give her something pale and pretty for hair or a hat ... similar to this soft gold yarn... or perhaps with some greens and pinks .... hmmmm ... time to pull out some stash containers and have a look what I might have that I've totally forgotten about .. ....

The big debate rages on...and on... ad nauseum... .

Dolls are art. Hmmm
Bears are art. Hmmmmm.......

Personally? ... I don't get it. The bear and doll makers of the world seem to be protesting all the time that nobody takes us seriously (well, okay... they mean"them" not me and I mean "them" too...not me) ....that nobody calls what they do "art"... that they don't include them in juried art shows and galleries. So what? Who cares? As a matter of fact somebody yesterday on Doll Street suggested to another that she spit in the person's eye that told her she was not a "real" artist.. because she "just makes dolls". Brother...... what next? I can't figure out why it is such a big deal.

Others were talking about what is art... and why. This debate has been around since, well, ..... forever. If you check a dictionary, there are about 11 different meanings...including this one.. "cooking, sewing and housekeeping are household arts"..... mmm... yeh..... Maybe I subscribe to the one that says: "any form of human activity that is the product of and appeals primarily to the imagination" ...but that doesn't mean it should be juried into an art gallery showing.

Many of the doll makers in the discussion decided that art must "speak" to them; must have an underlying message or something.... huh?..... are they saying that dolls must only be made to carry or convey some special cryptic message? To whom? and why? Maybe I just don't understand what these people are saying. Most of them have some idea of what their own message is I am sure...but when others look at their dolls, how on earth are they supposed to figure it out? I think it goes beyond ridiculous when they then put up their little sign that explains what the doll symbolizes and what it is "about". It is not saying much on its own if it needs a hand written sign is it? Honestly, I just don't get it. Maybe they just mean that the dolls should be made for a reason and it can be as simple as Mingus ... he was made for a challenge on the doll site... they wanted a dungeon keeper... someone to also keep the rowdy jester dolls in line...so I made him look .. uhm... well, you know.... as if he could handle the job. Actually he looks a lot like my Dad used to look. Really...I can show you pics.... He didn't get the position. A felty cute little animal did. There ya go...the right guy for the job is in the eyes and mind of someone else...

But the real thing about making this doll was that I wanted to try my hand at sculpting. He is the third one I have done with polymer clay...and I was trying for more features in a face. Trying to figure out how to do different lips... wrinkles and cragginess.. even a scar.... and I like him a lot. That is what counts for me.

My feeling is.....they really are just bears...they are just dolls. (alright, maybe with the exception of creations by Lisa Lichtenfels and a few like her) So what? Why can't people simply enjoy making them instead of being upset that nobody views their "stuff" as art?

I love to do mine simply because I have discovered that I can. I love making bears, dolls, ( I especially love doing eyes for some reason).... paper things, etc... ...and just want to be able to use new techniques every time I see one... want to learn new techniques every time I even hear about them .... to prove to myself that it can be done perhaps?... I have to confess...I don't really know.

Perhaps as simple as to be able to see how it turns out.....to see for myself and to show a few other people what I am able to accomplish.


This particular face has been shown on my blog before.. but just to illustrate a point... this is a technique that I was learning by taking a class. Cloth over cloth. It was very tricky... took about 5 hours to get that cloth overlayed onto the sculpted cloth face under it. But, I did it!! I was ecstatic to be able to accomplish it. The lips are formed with a tiny iron so that they have substance and do not just sit flat. Absolutely amazing to me! The rest of the doll is sitting, waiting to be finished...she is to be a Harpy... a mythological creature; part woman, part bird. She certainly will get done too...as there are more techniques I have not yet tried, but real life intervenes.. other things need doing at the moment. Like tiles and plumbing etc...

My family and friends like to see what I have been making..but for heaven's sake...if I try to convince them it is art or it has some deep inner meaning...or should be viewed with an eye to interpreting something world changing or earth shattering...... ...well....

Why can't people just enjoy what they do? Enjoy the comments; be happy that anybody even bothered to stop and look at our small creations? .... enter them into challenges or competitions if they are inclined...but why worry if people in "art circles", or whatever they call their little cliques these days, don't accept dolls as art? Who cares? I don't........perhaps because I also don't happen to think welding some bolts and nuts together is art .... nor is the slapping of one big stroke of paint on a huge white canvas... nope..not to me.

I am more a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants type of person...no deep analytical thought processes happening here about bears and dolls. I hate analyzing things to death...like to get on with the business of living, and if, in that endeavor...I find some fun things to do.....I do them. Yup... dolls and bears.... and.... so much other interesting and fun stuff that I guess I just don't have time or inclination to ponder deep and disturbing things.... things like why is making dolls not considered art............lol..........

Okay...Laundry and Dusting are calling my name.....


...... same day...hours later............

Hahahahha... I was talking to my sweetie about the doll artist thingy... and he looked me straight in the eye and said... "Well, I think you are a doll artist"....... oh, no.... now I am in a total quandary ..hahahhah.......