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.
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