I MADE A SALE! 5 New Doll Faces & Work!

I got an order for dolls! My friend Robert read my book, Dollman the Musical - A Memoir of an Artist as a Dollmaker, (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords) and he then decided to get some dolls from me. I told him I want to give him a diorama with 5 dolls.

So I decided to make 5 new faces for him, but I am constantly experimenting and discovering new things, so I may or may not give him this set of 5. I currently have about 13 faces he can choose from, but I am toying with the idea of constantly making new faces. I have yet to decide if everything I will eventually sell will be unique faces, but still give myself the option of redoing the same face for my own collection, but as it is, I have learned that every step takes time.



I don't think the art stops at the recognition of a face. The art includes decisions along the way, like altering the skin colors, the hair, costumes, the setting, and most especially my artistic statement, what message I want to convey.



The message to me is what matters most. Whatever happens in the future, I hope that collectors will collect me because of me, although I intend to keep track of all my works, and have some foresight of what might be expected of me as the source.

I'm still new to all this. I gave Robert a good price, and I'm willing to take in orders, but I constantly tell people, they are getting my art, not dolls. My dolls will always be "imperfect," that they will see a human hand made them, the struggle for perfection will always be there, but it will never be reached.

This artistic process is also a time-consuming endeavor. I see the dolls as a canvas - I make my own canvas as it is, and then more art is added. While canvases may be bought at the art store, my canvas has to be made, and has to go through a time-consuming process. Once in a while, I joke to myself, that if I can turn back time, I would not get into ceramics, but that's my joke to myself. I like what I'm doing - discovering the nuances of making ball-jointed dolls.

I actually decided to stay at home from the last week of February till July, and not "work," so I can stay at home and do all this, including my contribution to Alejandro's stop motion animation feature film.

You might want to read more, by clicking on the pictures. I always put in other thoughts on the picture text, usually more details about the challenges of using porcelain / ceramic to make ball-jointed dolls, or "bjd."

I'm also just now catching up with my blogs, facebook and twitter, taking a break from the actual process of making and handling porcelain. I make sure I document the process, not just for the blog readers, but for myself. I hope it gives people ideas of how time-consuming this is.

Keywords: Porcelain, ball-jointed dolls, ceramics, polymer clay, sculpting, porcelain slip. :-)