Tonight I have a strange one. Jessica’s portrait is still too wet to touch, so I decided to begin work on another project. When I began the 365 project I had planned on focusing on finer art. Today’s project is more of a craft, but there are some crafts that are truly artistic. Earlier in the week I posted a photo of some fairy wings, and mentioned the fairies that I have sold so many of in the last several years. I have for some time wanted to take that project a little further. The fairies I create are painstaking, I spend so much time on the details of them with the exception of one thing. Their heads are wooden beads with a dot of an eye painted on them. They are truly beautiful, and people love them, but I want to make them more individual. Today I sculpted some heads out of clay for the fairies. Sounds simple, but it was a pain in my….Anyway, I made them with Sculpy, baked them in my oven and then painted them. The paint needs some fine-tuning, I painted them in the dark in my garden (because I want to go blind), but they took me a couple of hours to create, and I am quite happy with their faces. I made two, one meant to be an elf, the other a fairy. The object is to make a mold of the faces so that I can reproduce them. It wouldn’t be cost-effective to individually make each face. I would use a flesh-colored clay, and only have to add lip and eye color. If it works out as I hope, then I will possibly do a few different expressions. I may try to finish a fairy by tomorrow and post photos of old and new for comparison.

While rereading what I have just written, I see that I am a little defensive about this project. I guess in a way I have a problem with the word “craft”. I have done so many of those church shows, and honestly never fit in. Not that there isn’t some good work at those shows, but I always thought I could be more than just a church show craft artist. I have had people approach me at shows to ask why I’m there, and tell me don’t belong there. I just never believed enough in myself to try for more. I’m beginning to change my opinion of myself.  I do good work, craft show or not, and believe me it isn’t easy to sculpt a face as small as these. I photographed them next to a pencil for scale. I’m actually excited to see a finished one.