Much ADO about stuff.

Recently ADO - Art Dolls Only advertised for new members. (Go on - poke around their blog - it's awesome!)
Their membership is closed to new members for most of the year, and I managed to finagle a place during the latest (very short) open period.
I'm extremely excited to be part of this group of amazing artists. And I expect it to be very good for me.

You see - despite doing arty things for my hobbies and sanity projects, (and my Day-Job), for pretty much my entire life - I don't always feel like I have a right to call myself an artist. Sometimes I feel like a big fraud.

Now, I know that this is my Depression/Anxiety talking. I know that.

I'm a skilled draughtsperson, and I have a good eye for colour, composition and whatnot. I sculpt well, and I can sew, and knit, and I can paint and I've taught life-drawing classes and ALL KINDS OF STUFF. I'm good enough at some of these things that I am paid to show other people how to do them.

But still, there's a voice in my head that whispers "Fraud". Sometimes it yells.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. The Day-Job involves teaching aspiring artists, and the single biggest problem that the students I work with have to overcome isn't how to draw well. Drawing is easy.
It's believing that the work you are producing is worth showing people. That your worth as a person isn't tied up with how people receive the things you make. It's why students who have done almost all the required work miss deadlines. Or don't show their Tutor. Or don't submit stuff for group critiques.

It's why I have a drawer full of incomplete dolls, and why it takes me ages to work up the courage to list finished ones for sale. (My Etsy store sat empty for almost two years after I opened it.) It's why I go weeks without updating this blog (and avoiding it because I feel guilty about not updating only makes things worse).
Why, if I get a nice comment about my dolls I crash emotionally - I often end up in tears later in the day.

I know not to do this - that is restrictive and not good for me. I advise students about how to deal with and stop this behaviour all the time.
But still...

Now, the above isn't a whiny "lavish attention on and love meeeee", I'm just getting so sick of letting my stupid malfunctioning brain chemicals get the upper-hand on my behaviour. Joining ADO is something that I think will help force me to face these issues far more definitively.
It's all been a bit heavy - sorry.

So, um yeah.
~OH NO! what's that over there?!?~
^ That's what we in the business call a smoooooth deflection.

Here's a colourful dragon sketch I did on Monday:

I used every colour of watercolour-pencil I have!

And some paperdolls that I made in February. (See what I mean? My gods, FEBRUARY. Why have I not shown them?)

Steampunky!              Sassy!                Stroppy!

Gosh, I do go on.

I'll have to try to be a bit more concise and up-lifting tomorrow. :D

OOAK Kitty

The paperclay kitty is done.

She has 11 joints (not jointed at wrists or ankles), and stands unassisted. 

I have to decide on a name and "story" for her, then she'll be going on Etsy.

Paperclay Dolls

YEARS ago, when I was in high school, I was quite fond of playing with paperclay. The only polymer clay I was able to find was Fimo (which I found horrible to use), but Whitcoulls always had DAS or Jovi in stock.
I still have a (poorly sculpted) male torso that I made when I was 17. The head and arms (and lower legs) have broken off and been lost since, but I still have the torso! (somewhere!)
I can't remember when or why I stopped using it, but I haven't touched the stuff for years.

Anyway, to get to the point of this needless ramble: I was stuck on the doll I was sculpting for my photo "tutorial" and needed something else to work on. I saw some DAS at the local Toy Store, so bought a pack.
And started to make some dolls.

Paperclay is hellishly messy to work with - which is probably why I stopped using it in favour of polyclay. I am quite messy enough, thankyouverymuch. It's very fibrous, and odd to use after polymer clay, as it's very sticky and slumpy, & needs a slow drying time.
It also dries quickly with the heat of your hands, so after working with it for a while, you end up with scaly cracked "gloves" of  dry clay. I've spent a lot of time over the past month picking dried clay off my hands.

I have four on the go (it was a 1kg pack), two of which are 1/12 teeny-tinys (15cm), and a 1/12 kitty (12cm).
And a larger mermaid, but I'm not showing that one until I'm a bit further along.
I don't think I'll mold any of these, so they'll be One Of A Kinds!

The Girls have the teeniest faces I've ever done - their heads are about 2cm from chin to crown.
This stuff is wonderful to sand (I don't like wet sanding anyway) compared to polyclay. Which is just as well, because it's freakin' hard to get a smooth, even surface.

Kitty before ears and arm joints.

Kitty as of 20 minutes ago. (Obviously, my photography has not improved >.<)
I dug out my watercolours (the tube of Windsor Newton that I used is over 14 years old! Buy artist quality paints!) and re-wet the pieces so that I could do a gradieted basecoat in yellow, and use some purple Luminarte powered  pigment. I have to let it dry, seal the paint,and string her, and then she's done.



I should be able to get my mermaid, and possibly anther small doll out of the remainder, then I think I'll be back onto the polyclay OOAK's.

Papertoy Monsters

A couple of weeks ago, PaperForest held a giveaway for a couple of copies of Papertoy Monsters by Castleforte.

Guess who won one?
And promptly had to wrestle it back off a short person?

It's an inch thick!
It has 50 different toys to make, plus 10 blank templates to design-your-own.

The Sprog made up "Octopup", and I made "Nom Nom".

Fantastic book!

You can pick it up at Amazon for around US$12. That's about 25 cents per monster!