oroburos69 | Doll part 2

Got the pics off my brother's camera, and worked on it some more today. Loads of pictures in this post, and I've decided that the doll's working title, will, as usual, be Frank. And, for anyone who's interested, he's about 17 inches tall. The character he's supposed to be is between 5' 6' to 6' (he's from a book with lack luster descriptive style), meaning that I'm working on about 1/4 scale.

I cut ten lengths of brass beading wire and hot glued the ends together. The I bent them into finger shapes and cut them to size, and then hot glued felt to the 'palms' to hold the wire bones in place. This was actually a really bad idea, but I thought I was going to sew hands for it then. I did sew the hands, but then I couldn't turn this tiny little gloves, and I was awfully ticked at the world.

Next I started wrapping the foam in undyed cotton, because undyed cotton is dirt cheap, and I can start a cut and rip the rest into lovely straight stripes (lazy artist's bandages). I hot glued all of the wrappings on, because I really do hate sewing by hand, and I wrapped it to remove the edges of the foam and help shape it a little better.

Here I started hot gluing sections of white felt to Frank in order to bulk him up. Hot glue because, did I mention that I hate sewing?

Oh, and hey! Pictures of my hot glue gun (it's a gun, what could possibly be better? Answer: nothing) and my giant baggy of glue sticks. No, there will be no sewing tonight.

Then I made myself a head out a styrofoam block. You can see the steak knife I used to carve it in the background of the last picture.

Frank with head. It looks proportional now, but when I start adding paperclay, it become a gigantic mistake. You'll see.

Here I added soles for Frank's boots. I made them out of an Multigrain Saltine's container. Those are delicious, which is why the the box was empty for me to use. The soles make him a whole lot more stable, and I could now breath around him without fear. With less fear. I also rounded out his shoulders, but to be honest, the second picture is just filler.

Here's where I started my work today. I hot glued the right hand to the arm in preparation for adding paper clay. That was a bad move, because I lack dexterity. Then I coated the felt palm and the brass fingers with hot glue, which was a good idea, because it gave the paperclay something to stick to.

Then I got distracted and went and worked on the head. Looks pretty, don't it? But this head is long gone. I had to destroy it, incidentally scrapping about $2 worth of paperclay. The styrofoam base is in there, BTW. I just yanked off the outer coating.

While mourning the gigantic head, I added a paperclay base for his boots (going to try making them out of scrap leather) and molded paperclay around the hands.

Goodbye ugly head.

Hello awesome hands. I'm ridiculously proud of these.

This is the head after I preformed emergency surgery to cut it down to size. It's much more human looking now. The paperclay I've added here is the bones of the final head. Eventually I will roll out a skin and drape it over this, giving Frank the eyelids he's always wanted. Also, I painted his eyes with acrylics, Titanium White and Ivory Black (I think it's Ivory Black, but on further consideration, the name doesn't make much sense...) I like to think of this as his Simpson's phase.

And he has eyes. :D I'm extremely please with how they came out. Although it doesn't show up in these photos, I used acrylic glaze to make a nice, shiny eye juices look. And I did it all with a tiny, tiny brush! Take that, shaky hands! Later I'm going to go back and cover it with an additional layer of clear nail polish, just to make sure it's completely impervious to the environment.