Four months later and I'm back. Seems like a whole other lifetime ago I was trying to convince myself that getting hacked on Instagram was nothing. So many people have had their accounts hacked. It's almost normal.
I use the word almost because I refuse to accept it as normal. There's nothing normal about people doing evil things. If they put all that energy into doing good, imagine what the world could be like! Very Pollyanna-ish of me but there you go.
After a whole lot of hemming and hawing, I finally decided to move on. An unplanned vacation in Florida (!) helped. Being away from my studio and being with my sister helped with the rebooting that I needed. Then came a sudden interest in French perfumes. I'm not sure how that started although the closest I can think of is Pinterest. Lots of unexpected ads pop up on my feed and I suppose one of them caught my eye.
Here's a screen shot of today's feed:
And right there, you see the Maison Louis Marie ad! I'd never heard of them so I did what anyone with a curious mind and a device capable of searching the web would do: I clicked on the link. Next thing I knew, I was looking at the Fragonard site as well.
I could go on and on about perfumes and eau de toilettes and colognes, but this post is really about what happened after all that link-tapping.
Well, the whole thing led me to picking up some Cosclay--that's what happened. I decided I needed to sculpt the image that just insisted on popping up in my head. It just had to be done because there was a whole other list of sculpts that I had waiting in the wings. Yes--I have to say wings because I had dancers in mind.
It didn't help that my husband decided to get me some samplers from Fragonard, either. It was like Christmas morning when they arrived. I wanted to try each one right away! But as I'm now older and wiser, I knew it wouldn't do to go wild. The most I allowed myself was two a day and as each day went by, the image in my head started to take on more concrete shape and form. By the way, my favorite scent in the end was Fragonard (the No. 9 from Maison Louie Marie is also a favorite but that's for another post).
I don't always sketch out what I'm going to sculpt. It's probably the ideal thing to do in the whole sculpting process. Sometimes I sketch out the anatomy. Sometimes I'll do a quick study of the pose I have in mind. Many times I just start sculpting and then worry about proportions later. That's probably something I won't tell my students to do specially if they're beginners, but well, I felt I could manage this one.
In the past, I'd sew up the outfit before putting it on the sculpt. This time, I decided to dress her in sections. There's only one reason for my doing things this way: I was too lazy to set up my sewing machine. For this sculpt, I sewed everything by hand. Would I have progressed faster? Of course! Think about all those straight stitches! I'm pretty sure I had something playing on Netflix or Prime. I can't remember what it is now but it must have entertained me or the hand-sewing would have been a bust.
I have to include this tidbit: her shoes were quite delayed because I was working on her during a heatwave. I didn't dare turn on my oven. The last thing I needed was to add even more heat in my tiny studio--besides, the power company suggested that we delay the use of appliances that use heat until after the critical hours (that meant running dryers and ovens after 7 p.m.).
I saw a how-to on Pinterest that I knew I'd be trying out with this sculpt. When working on sculpts, I like using different textures. Making a small basket gave me that opportunity. It's also why I tend to use real fabric instead of sculpting the clothes.
The leaves were a bit fiddly to make. I used colored clay but ended up painting them anyway because I couldn't get the look I wanted. It took a few episodes of Zoo before I could finish this little bunch. Maybe next time I'll try using crepe paper.
Of course I had to sneak in something of the source of my inspiration. I found out on the Fragonard site that they had magazines so I took a screen shot of one and printed it out to the size I needed.
I was rereading The Thirteenth Tale so a reduced printout made it as a book on her table as well. If you haven't read it yet, l highly recommend you do. The audiobook is also excellent as the narrators were quite amazing.
And there's the actual book. My husband took this photo and sent it to my phone. I think he got a kick out of seeing the books together.
So here she is, my Fragonard-inspired sculpt. The sheet she's holding has on it a poem called "Not" by Erin Hanson. I posted it on Facebook but I wanted it to be part of the sculpt. I'm not sure why but it seemed to be a good fit.
This is where she sits for now. I think she and my husband's Brommie kind of match. The IT balloon just happens to be there because he can't wait for Halloween!
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