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| Alice in Wonderland Sculpture |
Hint to husbands: Sometimes, we ask you what you think because we want your honest opinion, but most of the time we ask what you think because we are feeling insecure and would like reassurance.
As I painstakingly worked on "Alice" here for the Polymer Clay Artists Guild of Etsy Monthly Challenge, I was getting a little frustrated challenge. A challenge is meant to be challenging, right, but for some reason I decided to tackle my first human figure for this one.
The faux stone and grass base was looking great with each individual grass blade painstaking placed between the chopped translucent clay "stones." And I loved how the white rabbit turned out. Better than I had imagined him. I even liked the funky-faced mushroom that Alice would be seated upon.
Now all I had to do was create Alice. I started with her face and bodice which I baked before attempting to add appendages and her garment. It was at that point that I asked my husband what he thought. Referring to her hands, I fully expected a little gentle guidance there, but instead he looked at the baked face and started to laugh. Apparently, the size of her lips and nose in proportion to the rest of her face was funny. It reminded him of those statues on Easter Island. That was the point that the tears started to well up in my eyes.
He felt bad now. That isn't my usual reaction to his humor. "It's no big deal. Just ball it up and try again," he said. To which I replied, "It's already baked."
"Oh," he said.
Well! Damn! Now all I could see was her ginormous lips and nose. I had to start over. And start over I did, 11 more times. Every day after work I came home and started on her head. And every night I crawled into bed and gave the status report..failure 3, failure 4, failure 5. You get the idea.
Each one got progressively better, but I wanted to keep going. Finally I had one I could live with and I moved on to the fun part of dressing her. My husband tried to get me to go out and buy a doll mold, but I wanted this to be all me.
The moral of this story is don't settle for your first attempt. The second one will probably be better. And don't ask your husband what he thinks if you really don't want to know.
Voting is going on now through May 7. Please vote:
http://polymerclayartists.blogspot.com/2012/04/may-challenge-artsist-inspired.html
