Sea Siren Santos doll in construction

I am submitting this doll to ArtDoll Quarterly next week. They are having a santos challenge and I felt compelled to make one. I got an awesome idea today while trying to position the shells under the cage... Instead, I will capture them with string, as if a net were tangled in her dress. I can't wait to see how it comes out!

 

 

How to make a Santos or cage doll

This morning I was making art jewelry with two part epoxy clay. I had some clay left over so I decided to start a santos doll. These are made with the cage on the bottom for a dress and usually hold a religious artifact. Mine will be a memorial to the sea which I used to live near and now I miss.

This is only the beginning and it's made from bamboo skewers. Clay takes overnight to cure so I will post more pictures later.

 

Seek gets a faceup

Today I am finally finished with the polymer portion of my art doll called "Seek." I rubbed her down with acetone (after forgetting that it is a solvent, pouring some out into a plastic cup, and having my cup literally runneth-over as the acetone ate the cup, lol.)
Then I used Genesis oil paints to give her a blushy glow, rosey cheeks, beautiful lips, and eyebrows. I do think she is going to get real eyelashes. You will notice her head is shaped funny- don't make the mistake of making a "realistic" head, because then when you attach the hair or wig, it will be really BIG! So I left room for gluing, because she is going to have 2 kinds of mohair attached in clumps, starting at the nape of the neck.
But I won't be working on her head anymore until the sculpture is assembled. She needs to be attached to her legs now and positioned, because when you do a sculpture in the round, you really need to see the whole thing developing. One of the easiest mistakes to make is to spend a long time developing one part of your sculpture, before you work on other parts- you usually end up with something that looks unbalanced. So, next step- attach hips to legs!

This is what a day off looks like...

Deb and I went to the beach early today for a nice long walk. Then home to work on our art- she's making a curio cabinet for the kitchen out of recycled materials such as magazines, wire, and cigar boxes. I'm working on my dolly. She just came out of the oven with skin on her face, and I'll post again later with an update. So far, she has her arms and her dress, in rough form, and I apoxied a ring in her hand to hold the lantern. She will be called "Seeker."

dress

Looks mechanical now, just wait!

Fairy parts.

Can you see her Apoxy skeleton? I'm working on a 14" fairy sculpture at the moment.
Wow, it takes a lot of different art supplies to create her. So far: Apoxy Sculpt for the armature of the body, over wire; cardboard, bamboo skewers, Sculpamold and hot glue gun for the base (her dress); sticky-back vellum, Angelina film, wire, glitter, glitter glue, Gorilla glue for the wings (and a soldering iron); polymer clay, pearl-ex, genesis paint and UV resin for the eyeballs; 2 different kinds of mohair for the wig; PuppenFimo and Cernit for her skin. And I'm not sure yet if I will use actual fabric, or a layer of paperclay and paint for the dress...I'll make that decision once I have her body finished, but I'm leaning toward paperclay. Then there's the lantern- she is a Seeker in the Dark- she is leaning over, holding out a lantern that really lights up. I have a design dilemma to work out, because the lantern has batteries that will need to be changed, and a button that needs to be pressed. So I have to engineer it so it works, lights up, and is removable from the sculpture for maintenance. I'm thinking maybe one of those cigar tins that individual expensive cigars come in, with holes poked in it to let the light out.