Week Eight.

Again I have to say those well worn two works: Time flies.

I spent the first day of this last week kinda sick.. which was unusual for me and unpleasent... I stumbled around the room until the day was over... I did manage to pull myself together enough to work on an illustration for my good friend Lisa's wedding. Its a Ryzom themed image.. as that is where the couple met. Aaaah love and endless digging.

I'm pleased with it.. she's pleased with it.. life is good.

As to the rest of the week, I started the next two doll commissions.. and finished one (see image). The other one I hope to have done by this evening... with still some time spent with the husband and maybe a walk around campus (the students are away! hazzzah! Seed pods here I come!)

I owe this customer a heart felt thank you... I don't think anything else has pushed me so much as to want to make the very best work I can... at least not in recent years. Perhaps because I know its for a paying customer... maybe that it is based off work other than my own and requires crafting things I wouldn't normally have... shoes for example.. and fish.. and black fingernails, or really just fingernails in general... or human looking noses! Its been really good for me.

As to my next 'project'... the imp thing. I've been batting it around all week and after a few short stories and a little bit of reading (online.. did you know I own no books on fairies and other such creatures? Sure some I think I have a Froud book on Goblins and for X-mas I was given the coolest book on Gnomes -thanks Jim and Alli!- But I have no 'guide' that was based on, in theory, research.) and it seems that imps are really more like demons than faeries.... though I know this stuff is more than open to interpretation... and I do really like the look and sound of the word imp.. I think what I plan on making are more like sprites... ugg, I don't like the word.

And I figure.. if I what I'm making are sprites.. that I have to make fauns and fairies and faeries and all that rest.. 'cause really, that's just a whole can of worms.

And though I know I said I didn't really want to go down that path... I think its what would work with the pieces that I have. Let me list them:

-I'm obsessed with natural materials and textures. Check out the amazing hand colored wool I stumbled across the other day on Etsy from handsandnotions :
This overwhelming taste of mine really lends itself well to natural spirits and other concepts and creatures...

-I live in a very small apartment and -no- way of setting up a studio to take images of these dolls, but I have access to a lovely wooded area with already-there backdrops of rock, moss and all the other things I love.. wood, mold, earth, etc etc. (also, it would get me out of the house and down in the woods where I loooove to be.. and I'd still be working!)

-I, ah, like fauns and faeries and, yes, sprites and people understand them better than other scary stuff that I end up making when left to my own devices.

I think, over all, it is taking all the pieces... all the things I love and putting them together into one. In college one, if not, the single most eye opening experience I had as an artist or at least of my own work... is when my teacher took a look at my huge wire and fabric tunnel thing and said... 'take it outside'

I'm not sure how to explain it... I saw the potential of my own work and I saw how I had limited myself... I saw a world of opportunity and.. well, I loved my own work in a way I never had before...

So, sprites and faeries it is... but, MY sprites and faeries... fairies.. imps, whatever... I don't care... pointed ears, wool and bare dirty feet.. away!