Dippi

At 2017, Rämä got a mother. But despite what I wrote in one blogtext, it's not black in color but brown. Brown-white, chocolate/badger with odd-eyes.

I've not been in a good writing mood lately, so I try to skip needless mumbles about dollmaking now. Because I really captured a lot from this doll's process, so I can later use them for doll tutorial or whatever they fit to.

So she is made from white and brown silk clays, has white fabric in limbs and leather for paws and tail. Eyes are plastic beads what I painted. And not like I planned, again, she is too tall, but in fact that's not bad neither... Because rules are possible to break in nature too. This rat lady is taller than any other of my female dolls (not saying that I could own many of them yet, but...), and also few guys are shorter.

First amount of clays on.

As I like photographing her a lot now, I know the head got sculpted nicely enough. I even like how the blaze looks, it's not too childishly made. Ears were a bit tricky as I needed to re-attach one, but to nose I am pleased enough - yet. 

Sorry for the deadly flash attack again.

I always glue eyes only before painting the eyes, when everything else is finished.

Yet few pics to show her progress. Sorry for lack of fullbody photos, I don't know how sensitive people are to see naked dolls?

Rämä is judging my sculpting skills.

Rolled piece of fabric to the legs, it works.

About these work table pics, I apologize that the light doesn't focus to the area I want to show, or then the needed area is blurry. My table lamp doesn't like my photographings and adds orange tint to my pics, and flashlight often makes impossible to see tints in paint and so. To keep things rightly colored I just moved the light away and took those dark-ish pics... Only they automatic setting has OK flash who doesn't kill retinas when capturing closeup views.

Eyes popped off, socket painting done. Note that the paint was really wet before adding stronger strokes, to make it look more realistic.

I tried to take better photo to show how I painted the nose and mouth, but my camera and lamp hated me. Or then the doll hated all of us. "Let me add my makeup myself!" OK and sorry, lady.

Eyes glued.

First layer of dark blue on the right eye.

And first layer of cold red (almost pink) on the left.

A layer of mixed red and yellow, to make the eye to look orange...

...and again one red layer to keep it red, but warm tinted.

Pupils painted.

Bleergh, I guessed it... When I want to skip telling the process, I of course need to write things next to photos. Yea. (But seems that this works better to me! Once again I see how visual person I am, need to see things as they are before I can write.)

At the end I like her look a lot, she has delicious colors and realistic enough look to me. And a blaze - and odd-eyes! I even like her suit, what's an oversized (purposely) white sleeveless jacket/vest/skirt thingy. I wanted to keep things simple enough, as I really have no skill with doll cloth making, so I am surprisingly happy with how her clothes came out. There's not a real place for neck in it, her neck wire is hidden inside the cloth to give an illusion of a real neck. A gold colored chain keeps it in place and shape.

I also left the skirt's hem overlong and not symmetric. I like it enough that way, it's just a piece of fabric on a rat lady. I also can hide her toes there and that's nice, more eye fooling. The hem also is purposely worn-like.

A dark brown leather belt keeps the skirt thingy in shape, or should keep. It has a tongue buckle.

After finishing everything I yet added a needless keychain piece around her neck. It fits. (I have no beauty eye, but I like chains.)

Her name is Dippikastike, shortened to Dippi. The name means dip sauce... Try to imagine then if it's chocolate sauce on vanilla ice cream, that's what I adore too much at summer. Delicacy colored animals are just too great not to sculpt and paint.

Honestly, if anyone is claiming that rats are ugly animals... Imagine one in dress. It's true that in wild a rat can't always look that clean, it can have dirty fur, scars, injuries and missing body parts, but it comes from the environment. Just like with any other wild animal - I could go close to a wild fox as less than a wild rat. Domestic animals are different, they are bred to trust us, and we humans can keep them safe, healthy and clean. Even rats, too.

But yea, she is a mother for Rämä. I like the idea, now the little rat boy doesn't look too poor when he roams at stable with only a... long vest, as everyone else, almost. Also, I seem to know who gave him his photography hobby. Dippi carries camera everywhere, and when Rämä doesn't photograph, his mother captures it all.

Now I need to hurry if I want horses to Dippi and her pup, because... Urgh, I have less horses than possible owners! Only Asko and Omar - my Breyer CM dolls - and Kippo do own any horses, but so many else also should do. Of course it still couldn't be Rämä who officially owns a horsie, he could just keep one like own although the real owner is his mom.

(Hey sorry, some of my photos are too bad in quality, so I like to try to edit them to look a lot different. That's why there can be seen green, blue etc. tints who lie a lot when showing a doll's real look. Some of those also aren't taken with flash, so they could look boring without heavy editing.)

What comes to behavior and personality, Dippi has a history already, or almost has. She had been a punker at her younger days. Her taste of music haven't changed anywhere, just the look she has doesn't tell about it.

I also add few pics where she is with Rämä. Especially one group photo of my whole doll herd had a nice detail... There she was almost hugging her son, and same time Rämä secretly showed that despite his stupid teen boy image, he really adores his mother.

One thing what she does most of her time is to photograph things. A lot she captures Rämä and others riding or arguing with horses - or each other...

I just wonder how a rat sees what they are photographing, as they have very different sight compared to primates.

Her camera is made from silk clay, and stays in hand with a small piece of blue-tack.

Dippi's personality is yet under building, I mean, she is yet telling her story and personality. I'm going to write about it to the traditional scale dolls page, who I have written a lot now. Still not having any hurry with it...

When this is published, I have already two dolls to write and publish. Aargh. I wish I could post something else too, but I simply like creating dolls more than for example tack right now. Because, guess which of them has personality.

Kippura, another doll

I need to apologize again that I am publishing a doll post... Ooops. But this is important, and I try not to keep this unpublished too long time. And I really DO have other things to photograph and publish, what are not about dolls alone.

In this text, I show you Grievous, my last doll for 2016. Of course she was not the last of ever, hehe, no. When I write this, I have already finished the first doll for 2017 too, it has their own time later then.

Grievous is an artist name. I don't know yet what this lady is called officially. As nicknames she reacts to Kippura and Kippo, and other stupid versions based from the art name.

About her creating process:

I didn't plan to make Kippo that tall, but she accidentally turned to be same size as male Breyer dolls of me. Not bad thing as I had nice ideas for her to be, too. I wanted a black silk clay doll with dark brown skin, white blaze, weird eyes and a mohawk. In the blaze she could have spots. I wasn't sure about how I can success with this, but I think... I got more excited to finish her compared to some other dolls of me.

Kippo got a bit too small pelvis and no lower tummy... I really have a habit to add rounder shapes for my dolls, because I think they need it. And having a tummy is important.

Paws, tail and fabric 'coat' areas glued.

When sculpting the head, I got a crazy idea what I adored quickly too much. It's nothing unusual from me; her right eye is right size, but the left is... oversized, and I also wanted quickly that it's not going to be healthy. Yeeee. More about their colorings later!

Painting the face pattern was a bit painful. I wanted to use only white paint before pigmentless skin tint details, so I needed to be really careful. Maybe two sizes of small paintbrushes were used... The reason I didn't add black paint was that I know my paints could be clearly too different tint from the clay's color - the clay is really matta and paints often are not. And although a matta paint can look great, it's not good for too bendable surface (silk clay and inner metal pieces, not the most safe materials together!).

I started painting the face with adding brown 'pigmented skin color' to the nose and mouth area, and around eyes.

Blaze painted.

Bad photo, but the ear tells me that there is already the skin tone added too.

Better view, colors view as they mostly should.

Although it should remind a bit of skull (rat skull of course), it's still meant to be a realistic color pattern. So it can be really non-symmetric too, what I adore.

Kippo's eyes were the funniest part. Right one got to be brown with larger black pupil, but the left... as said, it's not healthy. It's swollen. I also accidentally liked it's color, I mean the bead's own color - and how it glows when photographing with flash! At the end I decided to just paint some blood vein things there and add the pupil, no more paint for the left eye. Added glossy varnish and it was finished - and my craziest looking rat ever was made, first time in a shape of a doll! (Really I have drawn those a lot now, that's why Kippo was so emotionally important project to me.)

Eyes unpainted.

Painted, before the pupils.

With her mohawk I got crazy, as usually, I'm not good at gluing hair! But it helped that I sawed there a place for the tufts, after sculpting the head and it was already a bit dried. Her mohawk stays in shape with water brushing. I got no photos of the mohawks's glueing process.

When she was yet unfinished, Kippura met few other dolls already once, and I wrote a blogtext about it.

After creating, finished:

Kippura wears a roughly made red leather vest, and a blue scarf. All that just to keep her OK for camera... But her nosering and earrings are not for that, they're what they need to be; actual part of her face. She also keeps a chain attached to the nosering, just for fun.

(At February 2017 she got also a brown long vest, and a skirt-thingy, because that leather vest just wasn't good enough. Her scarf also got shortened.)

Took these just after finishing her.

At the end she is not what I waited to finish, and I have found some places to paint better, but for now I am OK with her. I'm not good at retouching "finished" projects, not on paper and not in a shape of a sculpt. Who knows if I could still retouch a canvas painting as they're not my daily thing to do, like drawings...

Kippo is photogenic...

...and ugly.

Oh what the toe, in fact, in one and half of months I have finished more dolls than even started a drawing. Damn.

Anyway. Kippura is not going to under a paintbrush anymore. Instead of it, I let her take a stack of selfies (really many of them are detail photos of her nose, ehe hee):

That is clearly her better side, the innocent right eye.

Nose selfie - noselfie. Stupid angle.

Worse, worse, worse... The ugly side!

Nooo it was not even all... Sorry, but I like to photograph this doll.

I don't notice her skull spots todays, I see just a cute rat in a way rats are.

Contrast added in PSP 7 for fun.

Hmmm... A zombie...?

If anyone is wondering, after checking the text I linked previously... Hupi seemingly had enough patience to wait, and finally met the black lady. Both are dumbos, what are quite rare in Finland (no one breeds them here), and that's also why I don't sculpt them too much as I want to keep things quite realistic.

One thing I want to do well and also look that it does, is to make possible that the doll rides in right positions and fits to the horseback well enough (as well as possible, I don't own any saddles, except some stupid saddle-like leather things I've made). For my harm, I think Kippo isn't the best rider ever... And it doesn't help that I hardly dare to bend her limbs as I fear I break the clays.

All the stupidness in those bridles comes from the bit. Luckily they are detachable from the straps.

Her vest fools a lot, it doesn't really fit her.

(Continued to write this after too long pause, I just don't feel like a writer now...)

Need to giggle how just this one is the doll I see most effective when bending it to different positions. As I make rat dolls, they normally have quite long tails, and that's helpful with posing dolls. She also has good expressions who look OK in photos, in my opinion.

I tried to get photos where the idea is to show a freaking out horse. That chain doesn't help with trying to make it look believable.

From all my dolls, Kippura is one of the most photogenic. She is ugly, but she is meant to be! Not a rare decision from me. She's my first doll who got a recognizable mohawk and fits so well to my world I write and draw. It's build around rats and rat anthros. Here's a digital doodle, showing a random Corpsepainter design I am going to keep wholly myself (I like it too much), and who possibly gets his own anthro doll (or just a clay sculpture in some form) someday:

His name is Malicious. The lineart is bad, drawn with mouse only, but ehm.

As a personality she is heavily introverted, artistic and quite male-like. Kippura likes cats too much, and all her cats have been rescued housecats from an animal shelter. At 2017, she adopted a rat, Ripoff Sideviewer, from Asko's Corpsepainter herd; Siwi was too often tormented by his herdmates, so guys decided to get him a new apartment. Now he lives in a terrarium and is unofficially owned by Kippo.

Kippo being almost ready to go, while Tumpula is yet stretching his limbs... And another cat commands his feeder to give some attention.

Ryysis, a male farm cat.

Ryysis can't accept that his feeder needs to go work...

Sideviewer.

She has also a horse, a weird leopard spotted gelding called Otto. He was also a rescue animal, just one from Kippo's herd of creatures with less good histories.

When Kippo came to the stable... I don't know how it happened, I never really photographed it. Maybe she knew some guys from internet and found out that hey, they live closely enough, she could go there to get a horse life!

One meeting I have captured, and it was her and Cerys's first meet. I guess Kippo was amused while Cerys didn't know how to be, but they get along well enough. I even think that Cerys has already accustomed to see Kippo, although both are something weirdest ever...

At all, she has already good friendship built with Rämä and Juoru, and these three together are 'known' as the youth of the stable. Kippo is oldest, but she fits too well to those with her personality. Except that she is smartest?

I see personalities.

When I publish this text, I have already few more to publish. About dolls mostly... But as said, I have something else too, in different scales and really about model horses and their tack. I also have some photo stories to show - few photos from them are seen in this text.