Just finished my piece “I believe I can paint the Sky”.
I would like to share the process of making this piece with you. The piece is meant for an exhibition with the theme “On the Wings of the Wind” and the original title for the piece was “I believe I can fly”.
So, I came up with the idea of a box with a bird head in front and the tail in the back and the doll on top holding bridles.
And wheels.
I couldn’t find proper wheels but found the legs. So far so good. Bird legs might even be better than wheels.
Oops, do we need wings? Yes, wings will add to the composition of the piece. How to attach them took a while.
The colors. So many choices.Took me days. I was gathering piles of fabrics and throw them out again.
The painting of the face. The color of the lips changed several times.
Eyebrows. So many choices. These are the fifth pairs. A row of white dots below the eyebrows. No! Not good! Wipe it off.
The torso. The first one was too short because there need to be space for the elbows. Either put something under it or make a new torso. I made a new torso. And a third one to fit better in the box.
The clothes. The main fabric, a goldish pleated one, did not work. The blue fabric with the dots had to stay but moved from top front to lower arms. The total pile of embellishments went back in the embellishment box: too much.
The hair and the hat. This blue fringe was my original choice but then I found a dark orange mohair. And went back to the blue again. For the hat I wanted a flyer’s cap, so I made several out of leather. Blue ones and grey ones. All no good.
The collar. There was a choice out of four. This one definitively is the best.
The color of the box. It needed to be darker than the clothes of the doll. That went quite smooth.
Not the bird. The bird got all kinds of shades of blue: too dark, too pale, too bright, too flat. The colors around the eyes changed several times too.
Almost finished, but the bridles did not work at all and the hands were made to hold bridles. So what else? A brush fitted in so the title of the piece had to be changed. I made the brush dotted first but took that off again. Stripes it should be.
Done.
