Too tired to work on doll

I got too pooped out doing all the driving this weekend. Here is a glimpse of the rod puppet I created. She was inspired by the art work of Wayne Anderson and the book "Ratsmagic". She is Witch Dole. I need to finish her clothes and put snakes on her hat.

Toby Froud's Rod Puppet Class

I managed to make it to Toby's class this memorial weekend. I could not believe that it snowed on Donner Pass and I almost didn't make it over the mountain. I did not bring chains and so I followed closely behind a truck. The truck cut through the slush, but it was hard to see with the wind blowing the snow and slush onto my wind shield. My heart was pounding and I was gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles for 20 miles while we went through the mountains. Another person was coming from the Bay Area about a half an hour behind me and had to turn back because, by then, Highway Patrol was requiring chains. I am sure she is so disappointed to have missed it.

Even so, it was so worth it. I learned so much more because we really concentrated on sculpting. I posted a picture of one of Toby's dolls that I fell in love with. Tomorrow I will complete my puppet and hopefully post it then. I am exhausted and going to bed.

Happy mother's day. I was able to get to my Little Faun doll and put hair and clothes on her. I used an old beaver fur collar for her legs. She isn't finished yet, but this gives you an idea of how she is turning out. Her hair needs to be tamed down a little and I noticed in the pictures it looks like the fur on one leg is higher than the other, so I will need to fix that. But I'm done for the day. My son is coming over and going to wash and wax my car for mother's day. Hurray, it is a mess. Next week I will start my duties as the president of Gals and Dolls in San Jose, CA. I'm a little nervous because I don't really know how it will turn out. I was also lucky to met some great people when I went to Portola earlier this month. In fact, one of the woman, Kate, is coming down with her daughter next weekend. I forget how lucky I am to live in the Bay Area where there is such great fabric shopping. She is making the 250+ mile trip just to buy fabric. I can't say much, because I would do the same thing if the only place to buy fabric near me was Wal*mart. I put a larger picture of Faun down below if you want to scroll down.

Baking a Fimo Pan Figure

I sculpted a little Pan girl figure today and it is in the oven baking. Fingers crossed that when I look at it tomorrow, I will still love it. It is a far cry from the ugly stepsister I made in class, but I used all the techniques I learned and it really made a huge difference in the time it took to do. It still was about 6 hours for the head and torso, but I had to condition the clay as well as sculpt. Two big differences from taking Wendy Froud's class: 1. I was able to spend a lot more time to get it right and 2. we used Fimo soft in class and I used Puppen and translucent Fimo classic chopped together with Fimo conditioner. The classic is much better than soft. Fimo classic has a wax consistentency and does not melt in your hands so that when you are working on one side of the head, you are smashing the other side. I do have hot hands when I work, especially today. I cannot believe how hot it is, I finally turned on the air conditioner. It was over 84 in the house. Ouch. Water rationing here we come.

I decided to finish the doll I began in Wendy's class. She is certainly not pretty so do not use this output to judge whether to take a class from the Froud's. The techniques I learned and the experience was well worth the money and the time. I highly recommend buying her DVD because it is 240 minutes long and she goes over in detail her techniques. I posted the 'ugly stepsister' below. Enjoy and hopefully the next time I use Fimo, it will come out much prettier. I created a new wire armature, chopped up the Fimo and will start the new doll over the next couple of days. Too tired today.

Recovered from last weekend

It took me several good nights sleep before I felt recovered from last weekend's class. So today I will start a new doll. I am going to attempt a Pan figure but it takes me forever to finish anything, so who knows when it will be posted. I do know that using Fimo instead of Darwi clay will speed up the process. Darwi takes a good week to dry, so you can't sculpt and then keep working because of all the waiting in between. I believe that Darwi is stronger though because as soon as my last doll was finished, I dropped it on its face on the hard desk and nothing happened. I almost cried before I picked it up and saw that it had survived my clumsy self.

Back from Wendy's class

Valerie and I came back from Wendy's class on Monday afternoon, exhausted but happy. I learned so much in the class and it was fabulous. Wendy Froud's son Toby was also at the workshop and he is an incredible artist. Both Wendy and Toby created Pan figures and I really don't have the words to describe how fantastic they were. While I struggled to make a doll that had two eyes, a nose and a mouth in somewhat the correct area, they sat and worked on these dolls as demonstrations for the rest of us. I kept trying to coax Wendy's figure into my purse but he completely ignored me. Posted below is the figure Wendy started and pretty much completed during the 3 day seminar. Wendy said she had more details to button down, but to my eyes it was perfect.