Bone Woman coming alive.

I've done some further work on my Bone Woman for the Puppet Challenge.  A few more layers of gesso, and a lot more sanding and I got to this stage, and decided it was as smooth as she's going to get.  I've cut the holes for the eyes/beads, so tried them out to see if my idea would work.  I'm pleased with it, as it is a simple solution to creating an eye that seems to move and follow, as the shiny beads catch the light.

I sat outside in the sunlight and found that a camping 'Billy' (the slightly upmarket version, with a spout) makes a very useful holding device for a puppet head with a stick in the back of its head...though I had to weigh the billy down with a large tin of dog food!

I quite liked the colour of the first coat, but decided it was darker than I really wanted, so worked back into it with white, then in the end I rubbed paint off as well, and was pleased with the result.  I think it looks like she has rubbed chalk into her face, as a base for the fairly extreme 'make-up', which would, I imagine, be ochre, red clay and soot.

Next, I began to paint in the features, using the small mask as inspiration.  I just painted, adding in (and occasionally taking away again) colour, shading, details, until I reached the point where she seemed to be telling me she was finished, and any more would be just too much.  At this point, she looked like some kind of demon from a zombie movie without her eyes in, but those two little brown beads made so much difference.  

With her eyes in place, she seems not just human, but somehow sad and kindly and wise too.

The next challenge was hair, and how to attach it.  I looked through my collection of wool and yarn, tried out bits of home-made string, feathers, fabric, and then quite by accident, found something that did the job perfectly.  A roll of garden tie purchased from a hardware a couple years back, made from strips of recycled/repurposed grey marl t-shirt fabric.  I'd already tried making 'string' from it, but the result was too thick, so I tore the strips into thinner strips and discovered that the ends frayed and shredded and curled up.  I used a wider strip of it to make a kind of headband/skullcap (with a hole in the back for the stick), and began sewing strips with shredded ends on.  I cut long strips, shredded both ends, then sewed the middle down where her natural part might be.  A few layers later, and some thinner braids/string made from red wool, a few beads, and I love it.  

      

I suspect she will end up being far too heavy to really work as a puppet (I've still got body, arms, hands, legs, feet and clothing to add, not to mention I'm toying with the idea of a tiny Shaman's frame drum), and all that weight has to be held and manipulated by the puppeteer using only one hand, while the other moves her hand/arm.  But, she's my first attempt, and I'm really enjoying how she is developing.

Apologies for the not-so-great photos, they were taken using my phone.

Puppets, challenges...and Puppet Challenges!

I've been very quiet here, I know.  And the truth is, I don't have a lot to show, but I have been doing lots of creative stuff, and some of it seriously out-of-my-comfort-zone too.  As part of my 'moving to the country' master plan, I wanted to do something serious about music.  So I had a rush of blood to the head at the end of January, and enrolled in a Music Certificate II course at the local TAFE (Technical and Further Education).  I also thought it would be a great way to get myself out into this new world and meet people with similar interests.  I know myself far too well, and it would be very easy to become a semi-hermit here, in the beautiful bush 15kms from town.

So far, I am having a wonderful time, learning something new (and challenging) every week.  This week I sat at a drum kit for the first time in my life and had to co-ordinate left hand, right hand, and right foot to each do something different (but stay rhythmically consistent!).  Drummers make it look so easy!  I'm also facing up to the challenge of playing with other people.  I've sung in a group before, but I've really only ever played my guitar and sang, to myself on the couch.  Now, I have to stay in time with other people, fit in with what the group is doing, and that's hard too.  But it's so rewarding.  When you can actually play a whole song, as a group!

As for other challenges, well, I've signed up for the Puppet Challenge over at Clive Hicks-Jenkins' blog.  The theme is Mythology/Folklore, and any kind of puppet you want to have a crack at.  I hesitated at first because, though I love puppets, I have no puppetry skills, and also I thought it might be a bit too much with the Music commitment.  But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to have a go.  And, I thought it was high time I finished a puppet I started making years ago, in a workshop run by the wonderful Sandy McKendrick, in Fremantle.  This is a video of Sandy's gorgeous performance "Cry of the Seadragon".  I may have posted this before, but it's so lovely here it is anyway.  So you can see how beautiful her puppets are.



So, I haven't got very far, but here are a few pictures of where I'm at.  I want to make a 'Bone Woman' puppet, an old shaman character, possibly with a drum, who sings the life back into the bones she finds.  I don't want to design her though, I want to see how she evolves.  She's one of those elemental beings that seem to have a special significance for me, I'm not sure why.  Perhaps because I feel that events in my life, or one particular event (going back almost 13 years ago now, can it be so long?) made me feel indeed as if I had been stripped back to the bone and needed to be reborn, remade.  I'm not sure how I might use such a puppet, but that's a task for another day, first make the puppet!

Papier Mache head.  Moulded onto an old tennis ball, as a solid head would be far too heavy.

So this is as far as I got in Sandy's workshop.  Head, and rough body made from a bit of 'pool noodle' and rope.  I'm not sure if I'll use this, I'll see how it goes.

Head sanded and gessoed...and sanded and gessoed...and so on.  Still not quite smooth, but patience is a virtue I haven't quite mastered, and I think she's an old woman anyway, so some cracks and wrinkles are ok.

From the side.  The tape is wrapped around a piece of rope that will become the neck.  Hmmm, she looks a bit pouty.

I sketched some rough facial features on, so I could see how she looked, and work out where her eyes should be.  I'm thinking of using some dark brown oval beads for the eyes, set in a little, so they'll catch the light and hopefully look real-ish.  I've also gone back in with a knife and tried to smooth and refine the nose a little.  I now have a band-aid on my thumb thanks to the knife!

'Bone Woman' inspiration.  These are two little plaster masks I painted several years ago.  The pale one on the right is a 'Bone Woman' incarnation, the red one on the left is a kind of 'fox woman' character.  I think the puppet may have facial tattoos/paint similar to this 'Bone Woman', but I'll let her decide later on.

The two mini masks.

And speaking of challenges, today my munchkins' school held their Autumn Festival.  A combined Harvest and Michaelmas celebration, all about facing your fears, meeting challenges head on and overcoming your own personal 'dragons'.  This is our first year at a Steiner school, and so far we are all loving it.  A wonderful harvest display, Autumn songs and stories, and lots of fun activities (and a great lunch!).  Yesterday was very wet, but today dawned sunny and bright, so it was perfect all round.  One of the 'challenge' activities had me holding my breath a little, a rope bridge over the creek.  But my two munchkins went across as if they'd been doing it for years (and then showed off to Daddy when he came to pick us all up, by doing it again, backwards and sideways!)  When you face your fears, and overcome them, you know you can do anything!

Biggest Munchkin goes first.

 Littlest stops for a big grin to camera.

Quite high!

'Photo Essay'...or, why I haven't been blogging lately!

Hmmm, it's been a month since my last post, oh dear.  I find that the longer there is between posts, the harder it is to write anything.  There's so much I've got lined up I want to talk about, it just gets to be TOO much and it all becomes too hard and I give up and go and watch something dumb on TV instead...a bad habit I really must give the flick to!  So just so you know I have been doing something while I haven't been waxing lyrical (aka waffling pompously!) in the attic...here's a list of stuff I've done.  Which I've decided to give the very undeserved, but terribly professional sounding, name of 'photo essay'.

Sooooooo...during the school holidays, munchkins and I made a 'spring goddess' scarecrow for the vegie garden out the front.

Her head has seen a LOT of history!  An old polystyrene foam wig/hat stand, which I swiped from the wardrobe department in the theatre at uni about 14 years ago (well, ok, I asked first), and used for a life-size (and very basic) puppet 'Miranda' for the one act reworking of "The Tempest" that I wrote and directed there.  Hands were courtesy of Beloved who made them for me back then.  She's been knocking around in old boxes and upside down in crates since then, so I decided it was time to give her a new lease of life.  So munchkins were given one side of her face each to paint, on strict instructions that there would be NO FIGHTING OR MUMMY WILL DO IT!

Then we decorated!

They seem pretty pleased with their work!

Munchkins in the foyer of the Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, after the two day puppet-making workshop. Smallest made a 3-eyed alien, and biggest made a dragonfly (with a touch of Dame Edna Everage I think).  I was volunteering, and had a great time and learnt lots.  Particularly the wonder that is the HOT GLUE GUN, which I have never used before...I now own my very own.

Can you tell which are their favourite t-shirts?  And hats for that matter!

I bought THIS book (re-worked for the Australian market), and tried out the simple cheese recipe.  And it worked!  Even munchkins declared the fresh herb cheese to be yum

Equipment laid out.

All that it required was supermarket bought full-cream milk, and some lemon juice!  

Lemon juice added to the hot milk.

Curds put into the muslin to strain.

Knotted up and left to drip overnight.

This was my actually second attempt.  The first went so well, I made a double batch this time because I wanted to see if I could make a 'baked ricotta' style as well.  So half was mixed up with some salt and fresh herbs from the garden, and the other half mixed just with salt, and put into the muslin lined mould (the middle of a yoghurt container with top and bottom cut off) and weighed down with a can (which very conveniently fitted perfectly into said yoghurt container!), and left to drain overnight again.

Very carefully wrapped in baking paper and popped into the oven.

Crikey!  It actually worked.  And it tasted alright too!

A cuppa out under the apricot, which now is in full leaf (and is covered in apricots...we've already started 'jamming').  Me looking slightly rumpled (ok, it's how I usually look!), with my painting apron on...well, it's a painting apron now!

The garden looking at about its best I think, everything blooming and green and lovely!

The Lavender and those lovely poppies.

Some small feral creature spotted on the back lawn.

And California poppies too!

On the last weekend of the October school holidays, we went camping up in the hills, in the Darling Ranges out past Gidgegannup to the Avon National Park.  And trying out our new Pentax DSLR.  Looking north westish.

Fairly impressed with the zoom!

Sunrise on the granite outcrops that overlook the valley below.

Looking back over to the north west, to see the moon going down.

The way the granite splits naturally fascinated me, it looks for all the world like some ancient human cut monument, old standing stones perhaps, that have fallen in the aeons since they were built.

Munchkins in matching hats scarpering over the escarpment!

Dinner on the Barbie.  Grandad cooks!  Our tent in the background.

Ahhh, now you could have knocked me down with a feather when beloved said "you know, we need something to hang up here, some kind of a family decoration or hanging, something we can put up every time we go camping."  Because, well, I'M the hippy, tree-hugging, rainbow-kombi-wishing member of the family, and beloved...well, he likes motorbikes...and stuff like that.  So, after I picked myself up out of the dust, I suggested some prayer flags.  And because I just happened to have brought my little green handy sewing case with various scraps of fabric with me...I set about making some straightaway.  And here they are!

View from the big rock which munchkins insisted on climbing without PG!

 Then back to school, and I put my hand up to help out in biggest munchkin's art class again.  They're looking at mythical creatures this term, so this was my idea for an art project, junk monsters.  This was the first prototype to show the teacher to see what she thought.  Of course, I was only half an hour into it and I realised that this one was perhaps a bit complicated for 2 adults to supervise 27 small children to make, so I made a simpler version as well.  But I had so much fun making this (adults really should do stuff like this more often, pure silly fun is so good for you), I decided to finish it and show the class anyway.  They were pretty excited, and I've seen some lovely monsters being created in the last three weeks since they started working on them.

And so, back to the garden!  This is what the vegie garden is looking like now.  

The triffid on the right was once a Cos lettuce.  The triffid on the left is a Beetroot.  I have never seen beetroot run up to seed before! And spring isn't even over yet!

And this is my cherished Elder plant.  Well, that's what it says in the label.  And it looks like the pictures I've seen.  But aren't Elder flowers supposed to have a lovely scent?  And aren't they tasty enough to actually make fritters out of?  These, however, have no smell that I can discern, and after having a nibble on a couple of blossoms, no taste either.  Anyone know what's up with it?  I had utterly implausible romantic dreams of making my own Elderflower wine and Elderberry cordial, and they have been dashed to pieces by the utter inodorousness of my Elder plant...sigh!

And finally (this must surely be the most photos I've ever put in one blog post), I was asked by the school if I would run a little art club on Friday afternoons for Years 4-7.  And for reasons unfathomable to shy and never-taught-anything-to-anybody me, I said yes.  I decided to make some simple hangers with the kids, and here is a sample of finished work after the first 4 week block.

They're rather lovely, aren't they!

Phew!  So, I haven't been spending ALL that time watching Big Bang Theory!