Doll Experiment - Part 4

I am continuing to work on my doll experiment.  The experiment is to attempt to make a mold of a doll using the strip method of papier mache', and then attempt to change the pose of the doll.  I am also attempting to make the doll stand on its own rather than using a doll stand.  It is a fairly ambitious project and one that takes a fair amount of time.  The doll will have about seven layers of papier mache' on it by the time the doll is completed. 

Eyes anchored inside the head.

In my last blog post I was at the stage of removing the limbs and torso from the doll so I could take it off of the original doll.  Now that all of the papier mache' has been removed from the doll, the pieces had to be put back together.  I used masking tape to hold the sections of the doll together and have covered that area with a layer of papier mache' strips.  In the first four layers I used long strips of newsprint.  Now I have switched to smaller bits of paper.  The longer strips sometimes rumple as they move over the curves.  These last layers of papier mache' will be small bits of paper so that there is not so much wrinkling.  It takes a lot longer to put on a layer of the smaller strips.

The foot is flat enough for the leg to stand.

At the moment, the doll face is fairly featureless.  I will have to build up the eye, nose, and lip areas.  Before the eyes were added and without a well defined face and the rigid limbs the doll reminded me of Gort, the robot in the original version of the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still.  (I am a big science fiction fan.)  The doll has a very alien air about her.  I did have a plan for the costuming of the doll, but I think I am going to change the plan.  The doll lacks the appearance of fluid motion.  I would rather save my idea for a doll with an armature that I can pose as I want.  I am still working on the new plan, which is why I have not yet blogged about what the doll will be when it is completed.  But at this point I do not plan to make it into a representation of Gort.

While the doll torso was cut in half, I added eyes to the doll.  At the moment the eyes look rather frog-like because they sit on the surface of the face and do not yet have eyelids.  The eyes are mounted on screws.  You push the screw through a hole and put a silicone (or some product of that nature) onto the back in the manner a pierced earring has a back on it.  It holds the eyes firmly in place. 

I had ordered a box of doll and bear safety eyes online.  I am not very happy with the product.  The eyes were not well painted.  The screw had been dipped in paint.  Once dry a pupil was dabbed on and sometimes they were not well centered.  The eyes are one solid color other than the pupil.  Many of the eyes are so dark that they just look like black.  They actually look rather creepy.  The eyes that were in the size that work for this doll were of the dark variety.  I decided to paint over the plastic because they eyes just looked wrong in a doll.

Painting the eyes at this point were a little problematic because I still have to build up the eye lids.  I used some round paper reinforcement rings as a template to make sure that I painted the iris in a circle.  I just wanted to have some idea of where the eyelids should stop.  It helped.  I have not completed my painting of the eyes but at least it gives me something to work with on the eyelid placement. 

Since I still have a lot of papier mache' work to do, my next blog post will be on another project I am working on at the moment.  Check back for that post on Thursday.