I recently discovered a new website/blog and am enjoying it immensely: TextileArtist.org. There are so many inspirational articles on it - my favourites so far involve the importance of play and one that talks about the benefits of going deep into a technique or subject, rather than dabbling in a multitude of techniques and ideas.
Now, I'm all about dabbling - it is how I learn and discover new ideas. And I'm all about play - again, it allows me to experiment and explore... and that is a great way to learn, no matter what age you are.
That being said, there is some merit, I believe, in the idea of focusing on a topic or idea and exploring it in depth - something that I've perhaps been too busy "dabbling" to do.
Since I have no teaching gigs this fall (more's pity as I enjoy teaching) and with a possible artist residency and exhibition coming up, it is time to get down to some serious play and work on my dolls.
One thing I've wanted to do for a while is experiment with different face shapes. I started with the faces of a new pair of dolls I'm doing, as I had certain face shapes and expressions in mind. I took the basic pattern and tweaked it, stretching it here, rounding it out there and sewing multiple heads until I found shapes that I liked. I kept the heads with the patterns and am slowly developing a library of head and face shapes to draw from as I make more dolls.
I continued the experimentation (with help) at our Artist Connect meeting last night. It was my turn to "present" on a topic and I chose to have a hands-on activity for my presentation, rather than subject our screen-ridden selves (all those virtual meetings...) to a computer slideshow. I sewed 13 more heads of different shapes and sizes over the last week and brought them to the meeting for the faces to be sculpted.
Great fun was had by the nine people who attended and I was overjoyed to see how the faces turned out. Best of all, I had help experimenting with a number of different designs - a quick way to get results. I took photos and will enter those into my pattern library. Everyone took their heads home and I'm curious to find out what they do with them.
Oh, and about dabbling - I may focus more on my dolls for now, but my love of dabbling is lifelong, as there are just sooooo many interesting things to do and learn. I've already signed up for a 4-week online wooden puppet making class. Surely there will be time to everything?
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