Hope - an Art doll.

Evening peeps,

Today I'm sharing a creation I made for a challenge, and because I had this large cotton reel hanging around the house for the last five years..  I knew she would be an art doll, but it's taken until now for me to see how she would come to life.

The spark of inspiration came from the Andy Skinner/Tracy Weinzapfel collaborative Dare to Create challenge, called 'Skinzapfel', that they are doing in their respective facebook groups this month.  (Click on links on names to find groups).

The challenge was to create something a little bit Andy, a little bit Tracy.  So Hope was born.  Except of course there is a little bit of my brain in there too, hence the weirdness..

The body is a cotton reel, and the head a little silver plated photo frame from a cracker.  Both were treated to Andy Skinner's rust treatment, using Decoart Media paints and texture pastes.  The chain around her neck was done in the same way.  I used sand texture paste around the frame and the base of the cotton reel, which also had it's own texture to add to the rust feeling.  Her little 'arms' are Tando tree branches that come with the little birdies!  They too got the rust treatment.  This is the pic I shared a couple of days ago as a teaser, so you can see how she turned out now.

Her face is a print of one of my original paintings, and I just touched up her lipstick and gave her a coat of ultra matte varnish.  The flower's are from a masterboard I created in 'Tracy' colours, using Decoart mister's and media acrylics.  The little bird is a Tando Creative bird, and is sprayed in misters, and stamped in primary yellow with Andy's Toxic stamp set, the peeled paint/crackle effect.  The heart is also Tracy style, for the wing.

She has huge heart wings, which I glued dictionary paper to a metal frame, painted in pyrolle red, and coated in Decoart crackle glaze.  I didn't like the crackle effect at this point, it was too shiny.  I tried to antique it with the white antiquing cream, and again, didn't like my result.  So I repainted in pyrolle red, which led to a much more muted effect, and then antiqued with the black antiquing cream, which gave a nice grungy feel to her red heart wings.  (And those cracks are awesome!).  It's protected with a coat of ultra matte varnish.

The reason for calling her Hope, was that from all that rust, things can still grow.  So she has a little stem climbing up her body, painted in white gesso first, then Green gold.  It's doodled around in black micron pen.

The bird brings colour, as do the flowers in her hair.

I hope you like her, she posed a few problems for me but I'm happy with the outcome, and I thoroughly enjoyed the creative process, especially as it was so many ideas that have been bunched up in my head a while..

Right, I'm off to do some more rusting....  not personally of course...

Best Wishes,

Nikki
xx