I'm not going to inundate you with too much information, so I'll keep these brief and to context of the blog: who is who and how they dress.
Lewis and Amy met in Pennsylvania during the Civil War and married in 1869 (oh, those North/South romances!). They are a bit of an odd couple: she's adventuresome and high-spirited; he's reserved and intense. Amy is generally unconscious of how pretty she is. She likes some fashionable things, but isn't trendy and doesn't care for too many ruffles or lace. She also likes clothes that she won't mind getting rumpled. Lewis likewise doesn't follow fads, but likes his clothes clean, tidy, pressed. He'd be more inclined to do the laundry than his wife (and often does). Lewis is a dentist and the Fletchers are a middle-class couple (or as close as you can get to such in the 19th century). They have four children who I will probably show you all eventually.
Notes on the doll construction: yes, by God, I redid Lewis' body (again!). But this one is finally right and I'm keeping it (and I mean it!). More important: I love the faces on these two ~ Amy has the right childlike coyness and I finally managed to catch Lewis' bewilderment (he has problems dealing with the real world). I've always described him as having cat or lion-like eyes and I think I captured that too.
Finally, it occurred to me also that some people might like to download and print some of these dolls. The images I upload are not high-resolution, but might still be fun to play with, so I will be sure to scale all of the clothing to fit. Be sure to click on the image to get the full-sized image. Then right-click to save on your desktop. I am also creating tags so that you will be able to find each character and their wardrobes more easily.
Tomorrow: Another odd couple!
I had to do an errand, It's a grief to me to make dolls sit around in a state of undress, so yesterday, after finishing the last two dolls, I painted three pairs of trousers for the men, at least (the women are so much more covered, it seems). This gave me the opportunity to paint something black, but not black (which is an art form all its own!). I used a very dark grey here for Morse's trousers, with some black on the edges and shadows. The result is decent. They look faded, though, so before I paint any evening wear, I'm going to have to perfect it. I ended the year with five dolls that I was pretty pleased with and pretty well decided that they were the "ones". Well I'm apparently more fickle than even I realized, but I think I have a good enough excuse. No, really. As I was designing clothes for the dolls that I had made, I realized I had made a terrible design flaw. I had been careful to make sure that arms and legs were positioned in a way to be creatively covered up in a number of ways, except that I had forgotten to take into account that part of what would be necessary to cover up the arms in particular (and by this I mean designing clothes that effectively change the position of the body) was white space. Well I exceeded my ambitions in that I finished the whole set of characters (dollwise at least ~ they are still all in their undergarments, however, which needs rectifying!). I have to get to work on some other projects and don't want to spend too much time scanning them properly for now, but I thought I would at least post the "evidence" that they are, in fact, completed. The picture doesn't really do them justice since you can't see the lovely nuances of their faces, etc., but I will share them in more detail shortly. I have a few days left here before departing on vacation, but when I return, I will definitely begin working on their clothing. When you have more than one doll to work on at a time, it's nice to be able to switch back and forth between the two (keeps things fresh and interesting). I'd painted a body for Morse last week, but hadn't done anything with it since. Tonight I made a head for it (click on the image so you can see it in better detail). The best thing about this head is that I think it really captures something about Morse than many of my other pictures of him fail at: namely the sort of serene, vapid look in his eyes. I've never thought of Morse looking especially wise or priestly. I think he can be austere and certainly frightening for the intensity of his gaze, but I think his predominant expression is one of mindless ease: he's in no hurry to get anywhere and no earthly matter can be so pressing as to cause him a moment's fretfulness. This is not to say he doesn't ever fret or that things don't concern him, but in general, he really ought to have this slightly glazed happy look on his face. I made some modifications to the Amy pose that I posted earlier. She seemed too small in the previous incarnation. Somehow, proportionally to the other dolls she was okay, but by herself something didn't seem right. So I made her a little taller and a little stouter. I also changed the posture of her arm and hand. The other position looked awkward and unnatural no matter what I did with it; like she was trying to be sexy or something, which would be peculiar for the character. Anyway, I am much happier with this pose and will transfer it to be painted this weekend. I decided to challenge myself to make some dolls before Christmas. I keep trying to modify the set of dolls I made previously, but something about the James character has just never been right. After much futzing, I've decided that it's his pose that's all wrong and so, yes, you guessed it, I'm going to make him over again (third time's a charm, right?). I am still organizing content to fill here, but hello in the meantime! I am using this first post to set up the tagging feature. It's my goal to add new content at least twice a week, so even though this probably won't be a "daily", I hope you will subscribe to the RSS Feed and check back regularly! |
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December 2012
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