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October 14, 2005

"pajama dreamer" sculpture

by sven at 11:50 pm

Just finished a new sculpture this afternoon: "pajama dreamer". Here's a photo...

The darn thing took me more than a month to complete... Been busy with other things, had to keep setting it aside. But I'm pretty happy with the results.

I'm building upon the style I used with the "witch" sculpture and "nature god" collage. Improvements: the backdrop is masonite, rather than foamcore; the stars are more irregularly shaped; everything is set at angles to the backdrop; the figures are also attached to masonite, rather than museum board. Why? Angles are artsy. And masonite is more durable. ...Though in future pieces, I think I'll use a thinner masonite (like 1/8 inch).

The backdrop was a real evolution for me. I painted it flat black, and it looked awful. So I wire-brushed a bunch of paint away -- giving it a very tortured look -- and then layered on some purple and blue. It's not as visible as I'd like in the photo, but there's a lot of depth to the backdrop now. ...I feel like I just grew a notch, as an artist!

Here's another photo, so you can get a better look at how things jut out:

...I fussed and fretted for a long time about whether or not I should put hair on the figure. I decided not -- but did a test head with yarn hair that is looking mighty fine fixed to a flea's body right now. [Look for that in a future piece!] ...I'm going to need to set sculpture aside for a while, to be working on other projects -- but when I return to this, I think I'm going to work on making new heads and bodies and backdrops all separately and in parallel -- so I can mix and match "dolls" and their "worlds", and not be as linearly start-to-finish as I was on this piece. Working within a recognizable style allows this.

An interesting observation: All you need to make a plausible doll is a head. Or a head and hands, if you really want to go wild. Give the audience that much, and any kind of blobby body is passable.

posted by sven | October 14, 2005 11:50 PM | categories: sculpture