Still driven to twitchiness by a vengeful muse, I pulled out the polymer clay t’other day, and found myself making a face. A big nosed face with small black eyes, probably familiar to anyone who’s been seeing my sketches posted in the last few months. And then I stared at it for awhile.
Then I painted it.
Then I stared at it some more.
Then I sighed and began casting about for a way to build an armature for the damn thing.
I would like to say at this juncture that I have the most supportive husband in the world. Instead of giving voice to all the things that I was already thinking–namely “What the hell are you doing doing 3-D, why don’t you just do a painting of it, how do you expect to handle tools when you flinch whenever I use the tin-snips,” etc, he told me to do whatever my brain was needing to do, because that’s how creativity is and if I wanted to mess with clay or whatever, to do it. And futhermore, he’s spent the past few days helping me with some of the technical elements of getting this damn thing to work, such as baking the polymer clay, suggestions for wire mesh armature building, and helping me figure out how to adhere the ears and where to put the feet. (And even gave me the sincere, if faint compliment “I’m surprised at how handy you’re being with tools, since usually…well, you know…” Yes, I do know, and it’s all true.)
I still don’t know what I’m doing, and this first attempt will probably suck terribly, but it’s a learning experience. If it comes out presentable, I’ll post jpgs, if not, I’ll try again. It’s for me, rather than money, so if it sucks, such is life, and there’s a surprising joy in figuring out the technical elements that is generally lacking for me in 2-D–I mean, I never have to build a contraption to make Painter stand up properly. So it’s neat. I am telling myself that it is sculpture, and not in any way dollmaking, because sculpture is cool, and dolls are either girly or creepy or both. Even though it’s the same skillset, and I should probably ask my stepmother for advice, I am sort’ve twithy about dollmaking on principle. I fear dolls. Particularly the really lifelike ones with the big glass eyes. They’re like a Stephen King novella just waiting to strike. So this is sculpture. You couldn’t hug the result, anyway, so it’s sculpture, damnit.
Shortly, I will begin working on the cloth part. I can’t sew at all, but this doesn’t matter, because I have a glue gun and enthusiasm.
Somewhere, a legitimate sculptor just got a cold twinge…
