Starting Out

I have been sculpting dolls for a few months now, and after looking around the web at other doll blogs, I noticed that other doll artists don't really say much about how they got started or show their early works, which I think is a shame because we all have to start somewhere and it would be nice to see that they made some dodgy looking dolls in the beginning too!

So here is my story and my beginning sculpts.

I played with plastecine as a kid just like anyone else.  I made bad looking creations but that was all.  When I was somewhere between 10 and 13 (I only remember because of where we lived at the time) someone bought me a pack of Fimo for christmas.  I didn't really know what it was, and I made one large model of a little chinese man kneeling to pray.  My mum wouldn't let me bake the clay so he stayed soft and I don't really know what happened to him in the end.

My next foray into clay was in my 20's, and I decided to make a batman head in miniature on the back of the Batman films.  Needless to say that did not pan out well as I didn't really know what I was doing then.

Over the years I thought on occasion that I would like to make some little models that I could sell, but the idea went away quickly as I knew nothing about model making/casting.  Then earlier this year I decided to look into it again, as I now had the internet to find all of the information I needed. 

Of course once I began looking I realised that there were all kinds of models out there for me to make.  I had never heard of OOAK dolls before.  A few years ago I had toyed with the idea of making some soft sculpt dolls but that never got past the research stage, but now I was looking at all different kinds of polymer clay and air dry clay dolls, and I was fascinated.

I went to my local hobby store and looked at the price of the polymer clay and decided to go for air dry to begin with as it was much cheaper.  I came home and prodded some into a head shape and gave it a nose and poked a mouth in with a needle.  It looked terrible so I realised I needed to do some research and found some tutorials.

My very first head was following an air dry clay tutorial for a gnome.  Somehow it came out looking nothing like the tutorial, but bore more than a passing resemblance to my next door neighbour who had been banging about in our conjoined attic for quite a portion of the time I had been sculpting!  It was completely unintentional, but I laughed when I realised.

Here is a picture of that first head.  He did have ears but they broke off - one of the many down sides to using air dry clay.

My next head went a little better. I used some teddy bear eyes and made a sort of elf head.

It was at this point that I deciede I needed to make a full body too, and this little guy was born.

 

My final foray into air dry clay was this lady, and after a disastrous attempt at giving her a body I decided it was time to try polymer clay.

I know that some people can work wonders with air dry clay but I was having a hard time with it, and I didn't realise how much of a hard time until I got some polymer clay.