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?).
In the meantime, I thought I would steal his pose (or a modified version thereof ~ I might switch the hand positions since Lewis is left-handed) and use it for the next set of dolls: Lewis and Amy. I've made sets of them before and not been pleased with the Amys for the most part. For some reason she's been tricky. The sketch here to the left is the general sense of how I think I will pose them, though the disposition of their heads is up in the air at the moment. I'm actually considering doing both of them in profile, though I like the tilt of Amy's head on the doodle. The bodies are not quite all there. Amy's looks okay and I think it will work well, but I'm going to probably adjust Lewis' feet in addition to his arms (haven't quite decided yet). I really ought to put socks on him, also. It doesn't seem likely he'd ever wander around with them (so the clothes might adjust a little too). So yes, these are very very preliminary.
I was careful this time to keep the feet small and the limbs thin, which is another big problem with the current James doll. Although I have shaved him down considerably, I think he was just built too wrong to actually fix. And like I said, I don't think he's in the right pose anyway.
I'm going to try to finalize the shape of these two dolls tomorrow and then see if I can't paint them during the week. I'm trying to be less perfectionist about my work in general (and therefore work faster). It's been a long year of failed attempts and I'd really like to leave December with something satisfying on the table into the New Year.
RSS Feed
