You Have to Believe


While I am getting reset in my sewing room, 
I am resharing old posts which resonate with where I'm at now. 


When you're in process with a work, sometimes they get to a stage where they're downright ugly and it's hard to believe they will ever be what you envision.

 

It's hard to believe that THIS above 
can become the doll on the left below.
But it can.



Being an artist is not a straight progression from point A to point B.  Being an artist is about problem solving. The glue stockinette layer will dry for 24 hours.  I'll pick off any glue blemishes.  Then I will be filling in the crevices where the stockinette meets.  Gesso will be applied to the head twice, maybe three times.  Then I'll paint her.  These dolls are very labor intensive, as many of you who have taken the Izannah Walker Workshop have found out.  

You have to be in a very patient mood to apply stockinette.  Calm music doesn't hurt, either.  ;-)

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I really think you are a master, Dixie and I guess it would surprise me to know that you have unfinished dolls (lol) laying around anywhere. Your dolls are so beautiful!

hugz
Pam

Marguerite (Tina) Smith Hart said...

I think all artists have a moment in the processs where it seems like the waste basket is the place for our creation, I know I do. But then I hang in a little longer and work it some more and voila...not so bad after all!
Have a wonderful day Dixie, your work always looks fabulous to me!
Tina xo

Beadbugbit said...

I loved the quote, "Being an artist is about problem solving;" and I'll add to that, "Things always take longer than you think they will." Good dollmaking is a sloooowwww process. A learning process. A patient process. A process. And your posts are always uplifting, in the aspect that you are just a normal (if are any of us normal) woman, and you create great things.
Thanks!

Dixie Redmond said...

Thanks to you all for your kind comments. I am so glad that my posts are uplifting. I want them to be. I posted this partially to remind myself that yes, even when you hit snags you can transform the creation. Little by little,

Dixie

Mollye said...

She is wonderful! Oh you have inspired me to get off my duff!


"Do not let what you cannot do
keep you from doing what you can do."

John Wooden