Sketches, A Doll and Other Stuff

The Tuesday Painters group has been at a friend’s cottage overlooking Lake Michigan.  We’ve gone two weeks in a row and may go again this week…. If she’ll have us.  The cottage was her sister’s, another friend who lost her battle with cancer a few years back.  Four sisters had cottages on the ridge,  When Elaine died the other sisters fixed up her cottage and use it as a rental or for friends.  

There are great views of the lake, the beach and the pier from there and in this between season it’s an ideal place to paint and sketch.  It’s too cold to be outside and though the cottage has no heat we are protected from the elements and we dress warm.  We are taking advantage of it while we can; it will be closed up once winter comes.  

Last week I showed you the start of my Catrina for the Day of the Dead exhibit coming to the Gallery Uptown in November.  Here she is… finished and ready to be delivered.

And I got a few more of the small boiled paper pieces done.  These are fun little pieces to do and I still haven't decided what to do with them.

They make nice little gift tags but could also look nice as a little framed piece, or on a note card.  Does anyone have any other thoughts?

Day of the Dead & Some Boiled Paper

The Gallery Uptown exhibit theme for November is Day of the Dead.  I'm working on two pieces, this is one of them... in process...

 and a close up of her head...

The stuffing part is done, now it's time to add her arms and the trimmings.

Awhile back I did some boiled paper and while it was fun, I wasn't sure what I would do with it.  As I kept looking at them sitting on my table images began to appear.  I finally decided to play with them a bit.  Here are a few of those....

They're small 3 x 6 or 4 x 6 and I may use them as gift tags... or sell them as gift tags if I do this with all of the boiled paper I've done recently.

A Good Start On 2019

This year instead of major goals I'm making small weekly goals.  This week it's clear out the clutter in front of the pie-safe in my studio and reorganize.  Among the things I found, some long forgotten felting needles and the remains of a pair of felt slippers.

The slippers reminded me of a fun day when my friend Betty Kammeraad Dobie was teaching us to make felt slippers... we were lousy students but we laughed a lot... a whole lot!  Synchronicity, one of the friends who was with us that day is heading to California for a month or so.  She is dealing with macular degeneration and the early stages of alzhiemer's so is afraid her sons are moving her permanently.  That isn't the plan but she knows more about her condition than they do which causes her to worry.

Since I found the mangled slipper and the needles I decided to make her a doll out of the felt.  The scarf is some scrap yarn but the rest is from the slippers.. That's my art sketch for today. I think she'll remember the time we did the slippers but I'll have to remind her that the last time she saw the felt it was an oversize slipper.

And the rearranging of the pie-safe is coming along.  That project should be done by the end of the week. My next door neighbor sells wool for felting along with felting supplies.  Now that the doll is done the needles are going there.  Felting is not one of the things I plan to do in 2019, it's one of the things I had to try.... several years back.... and the materials just resurfaced.  Time to go.

Stones, Birch Trees and Dolls

Another Cairn with a couple of stones and two birch trees.  A strange combination, at least the way I have them on the pages.  I paint with a group on Tuesday mornings.  I'm sure I've mentioned them before, last week they wanted to know how to do the stones I had been doing so those on the right were the lesson.  The page already had the trees, another lesson awhile back, and the paint along the bottom. One of the artists wondered what would happen if she used this technique over stones that had already been painted and were boring.  So, I did a couple over the painted strip and it worked fine.  Yes, on mine you can see the line but that wouldn't happen on her rocks because they had been painted completely.

Since we can't always get outside, some weeks I take along things to paint.  One week I took a few of my dolls, some made by me, one a gift to me from a friend.  I did the full doll first, then chose to just paint their faces... here are the pages I did them on. The one with black hair was the gift doll.  The owl is actually white fabric but I kept getting the tint wrong so finally just gave up and left her green.
I do have a few more dolls, have to fill those other two spaces.

I don't consider myself a dollmaker though I do enjoy making them every once in awhile.  Guess I'm recovering something missed in my childhood.  I don't remember playing with dolls that much then.