Dolls and Art...

So I decided I will use the suspenders girl (see previous post) as my doll for the project in Suzi Blu's workshop. I made a few copies of her and then started to practice the shading with the Prismacolor pencils. Suzi said to really lay down the wax, so I did. This is the version I'll use to mount to the wooden support. It scanned a lot lighter than it really is.

An added bonus: for the first time EVER, I can say that I'm finally able to use a little bit of MY original artwork in a piece! Yay!! The face in this next collage is MINE! :) The rest of the collage is from my stash of digital files. Here is "Little MissUnderstood" :

While I was at it, I practiced shading a lot of faces that I've drawn. This is easily addicting and surprisingly relaxing! (another added bonus) Here is another one of my favorite faces that will be a painting I do from the class. She is my Sleepy Head girl. I drew her body with a doll in her arms and she's wearing a little nightgown. But for this collage I just used her shaded face. I'll show the finished version when she's... uh, finished! Here is "Flower Child" :

And here is her shaded face:

I did finally find the birch plywood we'll need for the next lesson. (I was having a hard time locating it at Michael's. Who would have thought it would be with the train supplies!) We are going to collage the doll's body onto the wood. We are to have our finished doll (head shaded) plus body painted by the next lesson. We will be cutting off the head from our paper body and adhering it to the wood separately.

Now I have to paint the bodies for these girls. They will not be colored with the pencils but painted. It has something to do with making the sketchpad paper sturdier after it is adhered to the wood and better able to take the beeswax later.

What I found really cool was watching the videos from Suzi's first Petite Dolls workshop. In that class they burned the image of the doll into the wood before painting it. That is really something I want to try! It's so generous of her to include the videos from the first session along with this current class. She's not doing the woodburning in our class but the videos are available if we want to try it.

That's where I am today. Also on the horizon: I just got in my shipment of dark annealed steel wire. All I'll say is: think beads, jewelry and charms (esp. those cute little nest charms with the pearl beaded "eggs" inside). Ahh, so many projects on the list and time is ticking...