Saturday, June 28, 2008

Gotta be there today

NY'ers come to Union Square Park today to see me and my little creations because I am taking EVERYTHING outside today to the park, even my beautiful standing dressed in fabric dolls, my big cubes, and all my new small stuff, ive got a series of little mommies as well.

See you there!

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Marudhaani

The latest creation is similar to a henna girl I did before but with a new pattern and more detail (she is a much smaller figure than my last one here http://thebutterflypeople.blogspot.com/2008/05/henna-woman-mehndi.html).
The idea behind all of these latest butterfly people is simple, the pieces are being looked at as more art objects than dolls or even people, instead of seeing a girl, you might see a vase, a ceramic vase which usually deals with form, and decoration, these just happen to be in the shape of human beings so the form is human form, natural and curvy, and the surface decoration now comes into play which makes for an interesting piece. The henna designs from the eastern parts of the world make the figure delicate and ornate.

She was hand formed out of polymer clay and then hand painted with paint designed to look like wet henna (before its removed). She took quite a few hours to complete, but the end result was well-worth it, enjoy the pictures below which documented her embellishment.

Below, the process begins, the pictures in the background were my inspiration for the body art designs used on her.


That's me folks





I love this designing because its very delicate and fragile looking, it also makes the surface of the figure more interesting, I am currently looking into form and decoration, seeing the pieces more as art objects than dolls or even people.



Below, after many hours or painting and perfecting the design, I'm ready to play with the eyes. First I paint the area the eyes will be at white, then mix the eye color, then pupils are placed and reflection is painted in.






below,
I skipped out on the red lips so that there was nothing too bold about the piece as far as the color palette goes.

The hair was formed from flattened sheets of black/beige clay and then cut out in strips, the strips were laid on her head one by one until the desired look was achieved. Not having solid black hair breaks up the hair and makes it less contrasting with the rest of the figure.


That's it, I adore her, she will be my new poster girl on my signage when I sell at the park this weekend (weather permitting).

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Bugs in jars

Take a look at these two little bugs, aren't they cute?
I made these tiny polymer clay figures to kinda rekindle memories of my childhood when I would take bugs and put them in things like jars or old plastic soda bottles and try and recreate a little diorama/terrarium type thing to keep them in. I still obsess with these things and actually love creating and designing aquariums and terrariums. Anyway, these little bugs got their own little cubes but I put rocks and polymer clay flowers inside for them to shelter underneath. Some shells were also included in the pieces. They don't have real butterfly wings, or any wings at all, but they are tiny and cute.




Friday, June 20, 2008

a little more of the same

Hi.
I have recently mentioned to a few people about my slow art sales and how I was disappointed that the summer though less than one day old, was not what I expected it to be, I suppose the economy even affects tourist-prone areas like Manhattan...
However out of this seemingly negative occurrence, I see a very interesting benefit. My art has never been more fun than it is now, at least to me. The girl I made today emulates (in a way) the girl I painted yesterday. Spending an entire 11-hour day painting one piece of art is something that I cannot explain to you is quite the luxury for me. The piece I made today has a lot of surface information, she has layers and is interesting. The days when butterfly people flew off the shelves (or table in my case) last Summer caused me to only make the tiny ones really fast, so fast they didn't even have hands, or clothes, I just wanted to meet the demand for them. Well now they are more detailed and definitely more meaningful, I mean, what customer of mine wants to say their work of art was based on absolutely nothing, that its creation was solely to make a few bucks to put in the artists pocket? How about being based on an inspiring journey to a museum the artist did not know existed which led him to the Tibetan manuscripts, which in turn led him to emulate gilding and carving in the colors of red, gold, and black? Now that's what Id want if I were you so I guess its quality now-a-days, not quantity.
With that said a special thanks to you all who buy my stuff, you guys rock.

Without further ado here is the girl from today, she was a trial and error piece that kept growing as she went along, I like that her surface tells a story, the story of her hand-painted decoration.

Her beginnings were humble ones, pink hair since I knew it was irrelevant what color she began as, since I knew I wanted to cover her with paint

Application of the gold



Don't the figures look great in gold? My next one will just be a solid one
here I began painting on the red paint, the idea was to have her look as if the gold was painted on the red when in fact it wasn't

more red taking over


Here (below) I noticed that I was preserving her face, going against my own rules of turning the pieces into blank canvases, so I proceeded to paint her face with red.




She is now reminding me of a giraffe (not a good thing in my book) so I'm a bit annoyed now. I put more red paint on her thighs kinda to seem like clothing.


Now I decided to trace all the gold areas in black so that they stand out more


Its a very organic look, perhaps a bit like animal print, but its just too much contrast so at this point I decide to cover the entire figure in BRONZE paint which will partially obscure all of the previous work but luckily allow some of the red and gold to shine through.

below, the first application of bronze

Second application of Bronze





This is the final product, in life there are a few more optical things going on and the red patches can be seen through the bronze.