Making Art Dolls

I signed  myself up for lots of swaps on ATCsforall.com for making art dolls - jointed paper dolls on a theme  - so as a result I have been making lots of dolls.

Great fun, the room is full of funny little people!


Rather than use a template -(thought there are lots of them on the site and on the internet ) - I decided to draw my characters and then turn them into the jointed dolls.

So I did lots of drawings.

I had 4 themes - mermaids, spooky halloween dolls, failed super heroes and women..


I photocopied the sketches I had made and stuck them on a light box with masking tape. I drew over the images, allowing for the overlapping in the sketches - i.e. I added extra pieces to fit behind other pieces, like long necks to heads so the heads could be fastened behind the bodies, extra long shoulders to the tops of arms etc so the finished drawings were all the bits of the dolls ready to be assembled with paper fasteners with all the hidden bits also shown. Hope this makes sense!

Then I transferred the images onto white paper and stuck the whole sheets to card with PVA glue.

I added some finer details - like the hands - and then coloured them in using Inktense pencils. These are very controllable but look like paint when wetted - you can also add more detail over them without the first coat running. I also used some twinkling H20s for the mermaids' tails and metallic pencils for robotic shine...

Then I laid each join together, pierced them with a - mmm don't know what it is called it is basically a pointed spike in a metal handle - and then used paper fasteners to animate them... I shall be quite sorry to see them go!