Aelfwynn has a Body

Aelfwynn now has a body and is all ready for her clothes.  Unfortunately, I'm not quite ready for the clothes as I'm still awaiting some vintage fabrics I ordered from Etsy and I still have decisions to make.

Nonetheless, here she is.  Her body is cotton broadcloth stuffed with regular ol' synthetic stuffing.  Three wires are going through her body - one for the left leg and arm, the second for the right leg and arm, and the third for the neck/spine/tail.  The wires are not attached to each other.  Her feet are glued onto the wires with two-part epoxy glue.  I've stopped using hot glue for a couple of reasons.  First, I can't seem to control the strings and I often end up with a mess.  But also I've had glue joints fail after a year or so - unacceptable!

I've wrapped her arms and legs with strips of felt for bulk.  They won't show when she's dressed.

Her tail is wool felt which I sewed to her body at the base, then began stuffing and stitching together from the tip upwards.  I painted the markings on it with Jacquard Textile Paints.

The neck of her cloth body is tightly gathered around the groove in her neck so her head can turn.

I haven't glued the front paws on het.  I'll put the sleeves on first in case they aren't wide enough to slip over the paws.

Elfwyn - Maeve? - Gets More Fur

 



I may rename this cat Maeve.  Elfwyn would have Anglo-Saxon costuming and I'm not sure that this cat's costume will turn out to fit that bill.  So her name will have to wait a bit.

Today I worked more on painting her head - about 4 hours, I'd say.  And here she is.  I got a bit tired of painting tiny lines with my 00 liner, but I'm dedicated to detail!  I may need to darken some parts but I'll wait on that until I have her paws painted too and then I'll make final adjustments to everything.

This paper clay, sprayed with workable fixative, makes a wonderful painting surface.  The acrylics glide right on.

As I painted her I noticed more and more that the symmetry is off here and there.  But I think that's OK.  After all, human faces are not perfectly symmetrical and they're more interesting for it.

Back to the Cat, Who Will be Elfwyn

I sculpted the head and paws for a cat art doll a while ago but then got diverted onto other projects.  Now I'm back to it.  When I got it out of the box I had it stored in I realized that I wasn't happy with the sculpting on the head so I made some changes - primarily puffing out the sides and adding a bit to the top of the head so that the ears didn't look so big.

After letting it dry for a few days (it's air-dry paper clay) I started painting today.   As always I began with the eyes.  I'd like to be able to dome some resin over them to get them really shiny but I'm not quite sure how I'd do it as there are no sculpted depressions that correspond exactly with the shapes of the eyeballs.  But I'll do some testing on paper clay scraps and see what I can do.

The colors here are just the under-paintings, plus I've begun to sketch in the position of the markings.  She will be a European Forest Cat - a rare wild cat about the size of a house cat and with markings very similar to a tabby but with more brown than gray.  So here's the beginning, and I look forward to getting back to it tomorrow.

New from Old

 

I'm reinventing some older pieces of jewelry I made to make them more wearable, and here's the first piece, in progress.

 

Previously the owl pendant hung from a rather complicated necklace with many purple polymer clay beads.

 

The new necklace will be a pendant hanging from a simple braided leather cord.  The owl and purple background disk are a single piece of polymer clay.  I sanded the back flat, removing a polymer clay bail and roughing and evening the back surface.  I then glued it to a piece of Lacy's Stiff Stuff, a backing for bead embroidery, and added the rings of beading and the beaded dangles.  In this photo, I'm gluing a piece of ultrasuede on the back to cover the stitching - the first step in making a nice finish.

 

The tiny "moon" is a mother of pearl antique button.  I sanded the shank off the back so that I could glue it to the polymer clay.  This "moon" covers a hole that a beaded dangle hung through on the original piece.

 

There is a hole sideways through the two feet so I could add something for the owl to be grabbing or sitting on, but this way he just looks like he's in flight.  So, the jury's still out on that design decision.

 

Tomorrow I should have the piece completed.

Foxes Complete!

I finished my fox painting today.  In addition to finishing the right fox, I did a bit of refinement on the other one, worked the snow in front of them, added more weeds and the left foreground shrub, and, most importantly, added a tail to the rear fox.

After I finished the painting I photographed it and took a horizontal sliver of it for my new banner in my Etsy shop, The Foxes Garden.  (A link to my shop is in the right margin of this blog.)  My plan is to do a new painting every quarter until I have a banner for each season of the year.

I'll offer this painting for sale in my Etsy shop, but if it should sell, it will be difficult to part with it.

Working on the Foxes...

 



After a wonderful trip to see my daughter and her family, I'm back to my painting.  As I prepared to get back to work so many other project tempted me, but I vowed to continue on this one until I finished it.  So here's what it looks like after painting today.

 

The first thing I did was bring the pine tree closer by eliminating the strip of snow between the pine tree and the weeds to the right of the foxes, and I think this was a plus. The bright spot in the weeds far to the right was an accident, but I like it.  It seems to be where the light would be hitting beyond the fox's shadow. 

 

Then I began working on the left fox.  The lost edge on her chest was a challenge for me, but I think it was important to leave it and not try to define it more.  There are still refinements to be made, such as better defining the left side of the chin and face.  But I got it to the point where I could begin on the other fox and I'm still in the process of getting that first phase on him done.

 

It felt good to get a brush back in my hand, and so far so good.

A Mistake - What to Do?

When I looked at this painting yesterday something seemed wrong but I couldn't quite figure out what it was.  Now I think I see.  The depth and scale are off.  From the size of the foxes they should be close.  And from the size of the deciduous tree, they should be far.  The pines would be mid-way.  But it doesn't look like that.  Distance is indicated not just be relative size but also by how high up vertically an object is.  The further the object, the higher it will be.  But those deciduous trees are about the same height as the pines.  That means they should be the same distance back, but their relative size says that the pines are closer.  So we have conflicting information - and that's confusing.

Also, the dead weeds look like cat tails.  But they're also in the same distance plane as the foxes.  So that either makes the foxes huge or the cat tails teeny.

I've got real problems here, and I'm not sure how to solve them.  But this is an interesting lesson.  At least I think I did a pretty nice job on the snow...