7 May 2020
Looking at the end of Lockdown and moving into Level 2 - it's important to 'Remember who you are"! After weeks of isolation and no routine....
I spent the best part of 2018 designing and making this series of dolls for an exhibition called 'Reflections on the Lion King"!
I began designing with this one - Nala. I drafted all the dolls from the original pattern I had begun with, a head, trunk and limbs, and changed them according to the pose and size I needed. This gave them all a uniformity, except the faces, which shape I changed for each character.
From this, I made both male and female, by widening and expanding, or decreasing chest, hip, arm and leg shapes, lengthening or shortening as needed to fit the character and to keep them to the correct scale. For this, I used images of the performers I found on Pinterest, as a guide.
I was very happy to discover how I could make Scar and Mufusa’s 3 D mask in cloth, and I had great fun making the Hyenas! So much so that I made a pattern of the head, and tutorial video showing how I did it, using a wet-on-wet technique, which I put on my FB page for others to try. I discovered that the more figures I made, the more instinct took over! I was in the zone, and each figure needed no reworking.
Process and problem solving is what excites me about design and creating. Making an expressive face through shape, needle sculpting and coloring, and the look of movement into a cloth figure is something to which I aspire.
To make something out of the ordinary, to portray the story gives me a great buzz!
The Lion King is a story of love and redemption, and it was the story as told in the musical, as much as the figures themselves that inspired me to make this series - and to see if I could!
Young Simba and Nala
The Lion King!
What challenges are you facing with the idea of coming out of grief, separation, isolation, or Lockdown? There has been a shift and you are changed by it.
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