Pip’s started a meme – My Place & Yours… with a new theme every week. This week is “On the Shelf”. I found these two sweet little kokeshi dolls in a gorgeous shop in Bangalow called Little Peach. They have joined my handmade girls on top of my radio on the shelf above the sink. They make me happy.
After a huge amount of rain (for Melbourne anyway) in the last 24 hours we now have lovely clear sunshine spilling in our windows. The studio is especially good on such mornings – lots of light and floorboards. I have already done some gocco printing and now have to wait patiently for my new supplies to arrive next week. This week I have also been painting more wooden dolls (I am especially happy with the little traditional shaped doll in her red stripes) and sewing the skirts on rabbits.
I have hit a bit of a roadblock with the wooden dolls. I have used water based inks to paint them which is crazy, I know, but I have had previous experience with these inks (Art Spectrum’s Artists’ Pigment Ink) and they have always dried with a kind of plasticky, water resistant finished. I expected the inks to dry similarly on the dolls so I could coat them in a varnish to seal them and finish them off… unfortunately when I started to paint on the varnish (Atelier’s Satin Medium and Varnish) the inks ran… I am hoping I can find some kind of spray on finish which will help waterproof and seal the dolls. Off to the art shop for advice!
School is back and Lily has decided to start afternoon napping again which is kind of her, so I am getting a little bit of creative time:
1) painting wooden dolls
2) getting back to those marshmallow bunnies
3) piling stuff on my sewing table
4) reading “On Writing” by Stephen King but not actually doing too much writing. It’s good! I haven’t read much SK before but even his memoir is a page-turner.
Little fuzzy – more doodling on wood… these little blanks I bought from Winterwood and I drew on them with my indian ink drawing pen. The ink bled a little but not enough to worry about. Phil thought I should make an entire chess set. Now that would be fun.
I seriously love painting on these wooden dolls – I can’t believe I put it off for so long.
Working on kokeshi dolls – turned by my awesome Uncle. About to sand out the nose on the front one and try something a little less clunky. School’s back today so it’s back to sewing rabbits. Stay tuned.
On my desk today are a group of beautifully turned wooden kokeshi-like dolls. My Uncle Michael has had a wood lathe for a long time but just recently has been spending some serious time turning out exquisite bowls as gifts and these dolls specifically for me to decorate. Let me tell you, it was with a tremulous hand that I approached the first one yesterday with a sizzling-hot wood burning tool. It’s hard to get my head around decorating them as in my opinion they are perfect just the way they are… but I experimented on the little peg-like one on the right.
The wood burning tool catches in the grain so it’s difficult to get a smooth line, but it was exciting and now my mind is buzzing with possibilities.
I tried wood turning at uni – it was incredibly difficult as a beginner (for me, anyway). It’s one of those activities like throwing a clay pot. When you watch someone with expertise and talent work at it, it looks beautiful, soothing and as easy as working with soft butter, but when you try it yourself things go (sometimes scarily) awry. I finally managed to turn a strange knobby thing to include in my woodwork folio, but it didn’t inspire me. Michael’s work *is* what inspires me.
