Seamstress Process

whoa, so it turned out that when my team asked me if i could actually fabricate that sketch into a sculpture and i said, "yea, sure," i wasn't bluffing. what a relief. honestly, i haven't sculpted for four years so i just assumed that i'd be able to deal haha.

received some valuable advice from the lovely sarah greenfield on how to work with paper clay-- so big thanks to her :)

I still have a bit of sanding and painting to do, but for the most part, i'm finished with the basic structure. here's the process thus far.

DAY 1: additional sketches for turning reference and a wire/foil skeleton for gesture and stability.


DAY 2: loose first coating of glue and paper clay. this stage reminded me of plaster casts from Pompeii (was that insensitive?)


DAY 3: started digging into her right hand, back, and legs


DAY 4: completed her left arm and chipped away at the feet (i'd accidentally made the wire/foil skeleton too large)


DAY 5: was only going to work on the feet and legs, but decided to start on the face as well. i actually had to use a size 00 brush and sewing needle to work on her lips. it was a late night...


DAY 6: finished off the face by filling out the cheeks a bit (it didn't turn well from the previous night) and added hair...exactly how i'm going to paint between her hair and face is a mystery to me...



phew! she stands about 11 inches tall and sits around... hell i don't know. the point is she's rather tiny considering she's going to sit in a 16"x16" shadow box. hopefully i'll be able to sand/paint her this weekend and start sewing her clothes/everything else/paint the actual shadow box before the due date.

one minor lesson learned from this project: breathing paper clay dust gives you volcano lungs. unfortunately, i was too lazy to buy a dust mask...though i had six days to do so. perhaps that means i haven't learned a lesson, rather, made an observation.

Josef Frank Doodle

new doodle for the birthday of Josef Frank (textile artist) here: http://google.com

jennifer goes to 3D land!

concept sketch for a future project....IN THREE-DEE!! excitement and anxiety follow.

scratchings

i have had better days: not much in the sketchbook but writing lately--but these managed to creep into the pages.

pretty sure i also need a new scanner (see streaky fucked-up-attude)

French Easel

i just acquired a Mabef french easel. this solves my poor painting posture problem- but sadly also puts an end to my brief yet brilliant career as a professional alliteration-ist.

Teeth, sketches, and android tomfoolery

Hell yes! I have completed a new painting (IN MY FREE TIME!) It's called "teeth," and you can track the process on my joint blog: Father Son Whaling Trip.


Teeth, gouache on paper, 28"x14"

In other news, i've finished a couple of watercolor sketches recently-- her are two of them:




and for those who attended I/O this year, you might recognize this illustration...working on it made me giggle:



something less interesting to everyone but myself: i finally, FINALLY painted on site. my coworker, mike dutton, convinced me to journey out for a quick landscape painting session recently. i quickly found out that i am a total hack. needless to say, i'm not going to post the unfortunate smattering of watercolor, but hopefully i will show future paintings (assuming i get better with practice...)

Oh, RISD students...

I forgot to mention this a couple of months ago, but I found it really funny how I knew exactly when Jon Foster gave out the "Wolverine Netsuke" assignment for this year's Cover to Cover class...b/c I saw a lot of hits on my blog via Google search query "Wolverine Netsuke..." all of which came from RISD campus hahaha.

Anyway, hits for this old blog post cropped up again (linked from another blog) and I was wondering how often pple were finding this painting....naturally, I Googled it-- and this is what I found:



HILARIOUS.