Thursday, June 30, 2011

I leave in 6 days for the 2nd North American Discworld Convention, a gathering of 1,000 followers of the hysterical fantasy book series written by Sir Terry Pratchett, who will also be in attendance. My son Shawn will join me. We selected characters for the Masquerade and his costume is fantastic and practically finished. Mine isn't started. I chose Lady Sybil, who raises Swamp Dragons, which are about the size of a lap dog, give or take, depending on the breed. She'll wear a simple Victorian style dress, so no biggee pulling that together, and boots for mucking out the pens, but I'm focusing on creating one of her dragons. His true name is Goodboy Bindle Featherstone of Quirm, but was named Errol by Nobby Nobbs, because he lookes like his brother. Errol is a freak, even by swamp dragon standards, with a face like an anteater, gigantic nostrils, a pearshaped body and his wings are about the size of his abnormally large eyebrows.

I created a wire armature head, wrapped it in batting and made a functional jaw, then a wire spine, hips and shoulders and limbs with joints so he could stand and be posed. His eye balls were made seperately and will be permanatly set later when his skin is on. He currently has an underskin of muslin which I will cover with 3 different leathers to vary color and texture and I will start with the head to allow the Apoxie Sculpt I added to the claws this morning over the wire and muslin to harden. Hopefully more WIP photos to come and a finished photo before I go.

I will also be taking a doll display with me including about 25 dolls from my on line club Doll Street from a challenge I hosted featuring characters from Discworld. You can see many of the dolls there in the Art Gallery there, though a few new dolls have been added to the challenge.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Been Tanglin'

    You never appreciate your health until it falters. I love waking up now. I love getting up and seeing even rainy days and feeling achy, arthritic joints because I'm still here. The last several months I've been blessed with rather large helpings of depression and chronic fatigue - great illnesses that no one can see. Folks say "Just take a nap and cheer up" but there is so much more to it and I won't bore you with it here.

    Now that my arms are working again I've been playing with some Zentangles. It's really the same doodles I did as a child only some brilliant chick gave it a title, copyrighted it and is making a fortune off of folks like me who need inspiration because they've lost their Muse and need to look at someone elses circles and squares to remember how to draw those simple shapes together. But it's working and in the past week I got a few drawings done on 3" square cards. That seems like a small canvas but this is tedious work particularly for someone who couldn't easily raise her arms a couple weeks ago. Some are better than others, and I don't recall the order of creation but, if anything, it kept me from lying in bed all day. I hope you like them. It's all done in Micron pen and pencil.