Alucard Doll

felt and paint, about 20 cm tall.

This doll is one of several I made over a period of several years, based on characters from popular movies and cartoons. This one is a representation of Alucard, a vampire from the Hellsing series (the inset at the right shows official artwork of the same character). Other dolls in the set include Jack Sparrow, Vegeta from Dragonball Z, and a Gundam. Some have been gifts to friends, like this one. My love of contrasts shows itself again: most of the characters I’ve used are villains or have superpowers, and here they are depicted in a “cute” and non-threatening form.

Each doll is constructed on a standard base for the legs, torso and arms, face and usually hair. The major components are sewn together, then I stuff the doll and glue on the costume details (like Alucard’s tie). The eyes and some very fine details are painted on. Since the dolls don’t have much in the way of facial features, I tend to rely on distinctive costumes to convey a character’s identity. I don’t always use felt; sometimes another fabric suits the character better.

A Head

This head is one of those pieces that I put together in a sort of stream-of-consciousness. I was part of a small workshop on working in air-dry clay; the workshop leader gave us instructions on shaping the head and mouth, then left the rest to us. I put on the nose with no real idea of where I was going, then I put on the eyes and they came out with this sad expression. Then I thought that a set of floppy ears would go with those, and added them. I messed around with the shape of the mouth and cheeks for a while, then at the last minute I decided to put on a pair of horns.

Afterward, one of the other participants pointed out that my clay head resembled Dobby from the Harry Potter movies. This is quite strange, since I have never seen any of the movies he appears in. I have seen him in the commercials, but that didn’t cross my mind at the time.

Bear Mother

foam, plaster and paint, 25 cm tall
Assignment: create a sculpture of a humanoid form

Apparently, a bear is humanoid enough to count, at least for my teacher. This sculpture is a good example of how my writing and visual arts practices intersect; the idea for it came from a fantasy story I was working on at the time (which never got written, at least in that form), which included a mother goddess who took the form of a bear. That in turn probably came from the expression “Mama Bear”, though I can’t be sure.

This is without doubt the messiest project I have ever worked on. The core of the sculpture is a carved block of styrofoam, and the shaved-off bits of styrofoam got everywhere and stuck to everything. The core was then coated in a layer of plaster which was worked for the fine details, then a layer of shellac (to keep the paint from destroying the foam), a coat of gold paint, and then a partial coat of brown paint to achieve the faux-bronze look.