BA Art and Design Week 8 Brief 1 - Multiples

Doll Cast and The Woman

Our 3D lecturer got us started on the plaster mould making process this week and I made a sculpture of a basic shape of a woman; easy and simple enough to recreate and gives the basic impression of a doll.

 

 

 

(Above images: Lecturer's example sculpture and process; plaster space that only two people could use at a time)

 

After making the Clay Sculpture, I inserted flat gold tin pieces all the way through the middle of it. then I had to cover the entire thing with plaster and once it had dried, the tin stuck into the clay, made it easier to remove the plaster by splitting it into two pieces and therefore allowed me to use the newly formed mould (in the shape of my woman sculpture) to create clay copies of the same sculpture over and over.

 

These are two finished examples of sculptures I made from the mould (The one on the left is shorter and fatter because it sunk when I removed it from the cast, as I had not left it in long enough)

 

This process actually took about 6 weeks (as we only actually started making the initial clay model at this point) because each of us had to take turns to use the plaster space and the lecturer wanted everyone to try the process (And I was just learning it myself), I quickly realised that I wouldn't have enough time to create a collection of sculptures from this process.

 

I only finished these two above around 4 weeks before the project had to be handed in, and they still had to be placed in the kiln and then painted.

 

So I decided to start concentrating on my customising idea and take it from there; keeping in mind that I now knew how to do this process and could use it again for another project.

 

The Woman

 

 I got to work on making another doll, this time I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Since so far my dolls were generally historical, Victorian-esque style, I figured I should try a more realistic one. In this case I decided to base it off of the "Lovely Ladies" for Les Miserables; because they couldn't have all been rich and fancy.

 

 

 

This was actually my first experiment with paintings a doll's hair and it took forever to dry!!

 

 

 

This doll is one of two in my collection which are different from the other dolls (which are basically the exact same doll); because I found these two first in a charity shop and they were proper Barbie dolls (which is why it had more and better quality hair and was harder to work with!)

 

 

Her outfit is actually one of my favourites; basically I went with the idea that maybe she was a fairly wealthy or even an ordinary woman, who just one day fell out of luck and ended up working on the streets. So her outfit is a mix of pretty, but scabby.

 

 

Because she was a proper Barbie doll, she was heavier than the others (which are all hollow and light as hell) and I couldn't stand her up as easy, but luckily we had a couple of display dolls that I managed to borrow the stands for (the ring around her leg is actually meant to be around another doll's waist... but it fit perfectly!)

 

 

I had a lot of fun painting her face! I figured that she couldn't be as clean and pristine as the other dolls, she'd have to be bruised and battered in some way, maybe even diseased ridden. Then there was the makeup, which I had fun with because I figured; "Well she's gotta get attention somehow, so... glitter lipstick!" (so, nail polish).

 

It was at this point I became more excited about the prospect of my creepy dolls, and I liked the idea of contrast; having them seem pretty and happy, but really they have a darkness which they all hide... and some will just be more obvious than others.

 

 

BA Art and Design Week 7 Brief 1 - Multiples

First Holiday!

A week off from college was the perfect time for me to get messy and experiment in customizing an entire doll body.

I want to:

1. Paint over the whole body for different skin colour
2. Paint and style hair
3. Make an outfit out of paper
4. Add a bit of bling, detail to the dress; beads and ribbons etc.

The majority of dolls I used for this project, were dolls of the same make, face and body (with the exception of different outfits and hair colour; as seen below)



When I laid this all out, I laughed because I felt a bit like Dexter.

 

 

I found the hair to be the most difficult part, luckily the dolls are cheap and I could detach her limbs and head which helped. I ended up putting the head on a pike for styling the hair; I used acrylic paint because I wanted to make sure it stuck and was brightly coloured. A downfall of the doll being cheap, was that there wasn't much hair on the dolls and it was hard to style, and or course I had to hold the hair in the style I wanted until it dried to a certain point.

 

For the twirls on the side of her head, I had to cut off longer bits of hair the doll didn't need and glue them to the side of her head separately.

 

 

 One thing I hadn't considered was that I would get red paint all over the dolls face as I painted her hair and that it would be hard to remove when dried. So when I painted white over her face, it came out quite pink, it took quite a few layers to finally clear the worst away, but I was fine with the pink hues, because I thought it looked sweet.

I thought this photo was interesting, I only took it to record how I made the doll, but I realised that the red paint on the mat and the fact that the body was headless, made the image look like a crime scene.

 

I liked the idea of creating scenes/photos that showed some kind of dark back story surrounding the doll.

I was pleased with how this doll came out and even though it took a few days, I believed that now that I had a good idea of what I was doing with the doll customizing and that next time I would be much faster.

 

 

 

 

 I started the next doll almost straightaway because I was excited.

With this next one, I started making it with the idea of being some kind of glamorous Victorian rich woman 

 

I actually sewed through a ribbons for the fold effect and I sewed all the flowers and the bow to the ribbon for her hat (I was proud of it too!), which was probably the longest process of this doll.

 

Same process as the previous doll, with the exception of the hair which was not as difficult to do this time round.

While I was taking photos, I took this one by accident, and when I saw it I realised it was really sinister looking and I thought that maybe I could actually use this in some other way. What if I could create an illustration of sorts, based on photos which portray the doll's hidden darkness?

So I was really getting into the customising process and this doll remains one of my favourites.

 

(edit: actually, now I remember, THIS, was the hardest part of this doll! That's a cotton bud parasol and its fabulous!)