We went to a nursery the other day, to try to find some live plants to replace the more bedraggled ruins in the pots by the front door — and we found a Henry Lauder’s Walkingstick in a pot – I couldn’t resist – I haven’t had a Christmas tree in years, and I fell in love with its twisted branches.

I’m hoping I can plant it and have it to take pictures in for years – but this year anyway – I got some pictures of Birdie in its branches. this year, Christmas is about remembering childhood and magic and making wishes….

I always wanted to be a painter, but I don’t have the fine motor skills to make the kinds of pictures I see in my head.

but using my camera, and playing with photoshop – i can have some fun and come up with some images i enjoy…
these are pretty simple – I just have to learn how to make them more complex … (but i really need to get back to squishing clay!)

What do you fear my lady?

found in a bundle of old pictures in the attic…. Birdie’s trip up the Nile

this year has been all about family and changes. learning about coping and accepting, and finding ways to keep myself from spiraling down —
thank you Forest, for always being there with brilliant and witty (on your part!) conversations to give me a boot in the rear when I needed it most…

And thank you Therese (twigling) for encouraging me to take on a bjd head project that has kept me playing with clay, so at least i’m not totally
blocked for sculpting….

I’ve gotten fascinated by photo manipulation which combines 2 passions – sculpting and photography – and have decided to see if I can come up
with some interesting pics of the things I sculpt….

so here is my first attempt – its not great, but its been a lot of fun to start learning photoshop …. and boy did i learn a lot about why this wasn’t
an especially great photo to start with!

just some quick pics of the white lady with hands roughed in this morning…

I lucked out and got a truly wonderful step-father, and a gifted if troubled mother…. this is a hard time for my family – and I’m spending a lot of time both physically and mentally with them. so my already somewhat glacial progress is a bit slower yet right now. But I am almost ready to post the next part of the hand tutorial – hopefully it will happen sometime this week.

meanwhile – i’ve been tempted to the darkside by my husband’s nikon d300. I really love a good challenge – and this weekend he set up the camera on the backporch with a manual focus 500 lens with 1.4 extender and challenged me to take some bird pictures. Those little suckers sure move fast!!! It took me the first hour or so to be able to actually point the blamed camera at what I wanted to take pictures of (helped a lot when i changed glasses so I could actually see the birds out at 30 or 40 feet – ) and then to get used to focusing while the bird was moving – i feel so slow!!!

but it really was a lot of fun – and i am feeling a newbie’s great delight in some of the pictures….
(can’t wait till I manage to get the whole bird in the picture, and in focus!!!)

have mostly been working on her jointed hands (this is one of those times when i really wish i had more time to work on sculpts….) but also tried to make a wig for her (if anyone knows of a really good tutorial for making removeable wigs with stretch caps, i would love to hear about it)
and starting to detail her torso, lips and eyes…. gave her half closed eyes just to see how it looks…

added some more steps to the process I’m using to make ball jointed hands.

the tutorial continues with information about sculpting palms and fingers

I’m posting pics and notes as I make the hands for the white lady – here :
sculpting jointed BJD hands

this figure needed articulated hands… I’ve done one before, and they are incredibly time consuming and nitpicky – but I love them. As I’ve been working on this one i’m realizing that i’d never tried to connect the hand i did before, to a figure …. so i’m having to rethink some things.

But anyway – here are pics of her with her first hand roughed in. now comes the painful finishing of each individual joint so that the hand works well and looks ok. I think there are about 15 joints per hand, or thereabouts. next pair i’m going to make a little differently.

spent today watching the pelicans, elephant seals and gulls along the California coast near Santa Cruz…