Here she is, pretty well done. There are some bits of whitecap on the ocean. Seagulls in the background. I have to varnish it. I like her.

Submitted Gretchen...

That's what I like to call my Rusty Spring Doll. She's winging her way to Art Doll Quarterly for their consideration for an issue next spring featuring re-using/recycling things in a new way. I hope they like her. :-)

ATC made at my desk....

I made this using things found at my desk. The woman in the lower left corner is my high school senior picture!

Nearly Done

She's nearly done, a lot of her arm detail and such is lost in the photo. I have to mount the big pearl in her hand so she can quit look like she's popped up to wave. The little things in the background are seagulls.

I've been working on an Asian Stuffed Mermaid...you can see some detail in her tail. You also can see my helper, Sadie. I moved her 3 or 4 times, you see how successful I was!!! The Found Art girl, is inspired by Sally Jean Alexander's work. It's a mattress spring, pulled up to make it stand up so I could put in the antique vanilla bottle in it as the body and old keys for arms. I used Ranger Alcohol Inks inside to give it some color. Then I hung various found rusty things that I found and some things that weren't rusty so I patinaed them so they would look it. That's an antique clock face for her face w/new hands on it. I want to submit this to Art Doll Quarterly for their "recycled" doll edition. The guidelines seemed to indicate using old clothing, but at the end said or anything else recycled, and I think this qualifies. Will have to pack her today so can mail on Tuesday.

Asian Mermaid Doll & Rusty Spring doll

She's not done, this is her basic face w/o color. The bodytail has tiny pearls sewn on it, in the tail itself has freshwater pearls, Asian coins, sea glass, nautical charms, little broken china cup, etc. Things a mermaids tail would gather along the sea bottom.

More Progress

The flash on my phone camera makes the tail appear a lot shinier than it is in real life. I used Golden's Clear Granular to give the tail texture but so you could still see the layers of color under the texture. I went over some of my definition lines w/my finepoint Sharpie. Using almost entirely Derwent watercolor pencils, I kept losing the definition. There's shading that the phone isn't really picking up, but I hope to be using the digital camera when I finish.

Lack of Detail....I don't like that...

I have some of my favorite mixed media pieces that I want to photograph w/our digital camera for better detail...just have to remember how to get the pix from the camera to the blog. In an effort to make my current works more "lifelike", I haven't been making the shading/shadowing as obvious, and using my phone to take the pix isn't capturing it, leaving my work looking rather 1 demensional. :-(