Mr. Kraai, the doctor - PaperArtsy

Hello! Come and meet Mr. Kraai, the doctor. I made him and his wife for PaperArtsy's "Art Dolls" topic. You can see the original post here (link).

The figure of a crow headed character was my first thought when I started thinking about art dolls. You don't have to look far for the reason of the crow - it's my favorite bird and I've done several pieces with this flying creature as you might remember. One of them is even this canopic jar looking crow headed character (link), which has quite the same basic shape as the doll. The other previous crow piece, which has some things in common with this project is this amulet piece (link). It's painted on top of thick felt, embroidered and then cast in resin.

So, the crow part we've covered, but where did the idea of the pale human hands come from? I mean I didn't think even for a minute to make wings or anything other than translucent, pale hands for the characters. I can only think it coming from the Finnish artist and print-maker Outi Heiskanen, who made etchings of hybrid creatures. I visited Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, a couple of years ago when she had a big retrospective there. I especially recall a horse-head character with a black dress and very delicate, elegant hands. The artist re-used and combined her plates, so there's several pieces with the same character. The hands are not clearly seen in this version (link) I found from the Finnish National Gallery collection archive, but I guess that's better than just my words.

The characters I created also have another Finnish source. Another artist and print-maker, in fact, Kirsi Neuvonen. Among other topics, she makes prints with fantastic dresses. The shape of the dress is always simple, but the skirt is decorated elaborately. You can see some of the dresses here (link) on her web page. The idea of decorating the dresses of the character can be traced here. The shape of the garment the dolls are wearing is very simple, a rectangle to be honest, but the patterns and especially embroidery turn them into something precious, even something regal.

I was debating whether or not to include a ruffle to these characters through the whole process. I made some sketches before starting with and without a ruffle around their necks and was leaning towards not adding one when I started the actual making process. During it I changed my mind and wanted to highlight the Baroque feel of the characters. This silhouette of a black dress with an elaborate ruffle is something I've used before, too. In this statuette (link) I used air-drying clay as the sculpting material and used tea bags as the ruffle. I've always loved Rococo period, but it seems Baroque is way more presented in my art!

One more thing, like TV character Lieutenant Columbo. I want to share how I incorporated the quarter theme of "Transparent" in my project. The first idea was to include little wings to the characters. Even though I was thinking about birds, I didn't want to include feathered wings but instead something more delicate. Scrapcosy stamp set with beautiful blooms for the dresses and butterflies for the wings seemed the perfect pairing to these characters! I wanted to highlight the delicate nature of the wings by making them translucent and used a transparency as my substrate. I also made the paints more transparent and even included a translucent polymer clay in the make. 

If you want to see a step by step version of the making process, please visit the PaperArtsy blog (link)! I've tried to open the process even more there.

Thank you for stopping by today! Wishing you a fantastic week!

Materials: PaperArtsy, Fimo by Staedler, Tsukineko, GelliArts