Seven - no, EIGHT - Pet Artists in one fundraiser!

Detail of Minke
eyes are leather buttons, painted with
acrylic

I'll be creating a soft sculpture portrait: a first for me!  
{edit: bidding is now closed.  Thanks to all the participants!}

If you've been reading my blog, it's probably because of my pet portrait work.  I'm really stepping outside my own box for this one, since I was in such challengingly unusual and talented company in this auction.

Sculpture has always been a big draw for me, but for some reason, I've only dabbled.

Minke
primitive soft sculpture for my sister,
who's last name is Vinke

Wax portrait, cast from clay portrait bust
© Xan Blackburn 2012

I did a bunch of soft sculpture in my mid-20s, I have a drawer full of nice wood-carving tools, another with various polymer clays  I kept a wax mask of a clay portrait I made that was meant to be used in a bronze-casting class, but never was.  I got excited about paper mache a little while ago, and created a portrait of my friend Billie's dog, Buddy.  I'd love to do ceramic sculpture, but not having a kiln has always seemed too big a barrier to start.

But this opportunity just screamed sculpture to me.

I've been taking bits of time here and there to look at what others have done in this area: art dolls, soft sculpture, softies, stuffies ... As you might guess, etsy.com is nearly a bottomless source of inspiration and wonder (just for starters ...)  Among so many fun, amazing, funky, funny, purposely ugly, primitive and positively ornate offerings, there are many that have fired my imagination.  Lisa Lichtenfels absolutely knocks my socks off.  I'm thinking I might have to add soft sculpture to my repertoire on a permanent basis.

You might think it would be a drawback that I haven't got a sewing machine.  Well, they scare me, y'know?  I ran my mom's sewing machine needle into my thumbnail when I was little, and haven't been the same since.  Childhood trauma.  You know.  So, I'll be hand-stitching.  I'm sort of obsessive when I do sew, and my stitches are tiny, which is good, but time-consuming.  I also have a tendency to stick needles and pins into me, which I like to think means that there is literally a bit of my heart in each thing I sew.

I'm not at all sure how I'll approach my winner's pet portrait.  Depends on the pet, the owner, and the synergy that always happens there.  I have a feeling I'll be using a mix of techniques.  Maybe the doll will be posable, with a wire armature or joints.  Maybe there will be a mix of materials, both hard and soft.  Maybe there will be recycled materials involved, to honor the recycled nature of an adopted pet.

We'll know pretty soon who the winner is!  If you want it to be you, get bidding!  ;)

The Auction is ON!

Born to Run Global Sighthound Rescue

Read all about it over here, but the main idea is:
Seven artists, all totally different, offering their unique and amazing talents to create pet portraits for seven lucky bidders!
I'm doing a soft sculpture, which should be a lot of fun.  I can't wait to get going on it!
Go and bid!  :D


Edited to add:
Thanks Jonni Good (one of the seven artists participating in the auction) for the very nice blog post about this!

Keeping it fresh!

See a difference around here?
I just finished my web re-design.  Tell me what you think!  Go take a look at my website and give me some feedback, okay?

Okay, now I can work on Petey some more!

Reminder!  Make sure you're ready to bid on the SEVEN ARTIST Pet Portrait Artist Auction starting on April 20th at 9am Pacific time!

And now for something completely different!

So, why so quiet, Xan?  Still recovering from the months-long portrait marathon??  Well, sort of, but that's not why.

Click here for more details, and to register!

I've been working on a fundraiser like you've never seen before.  Hyperbole?  I don't think so.  At least, I've never seen one anything like this before!

SEVEN artists (of which I am one) are offering pet portraits for this auction: it's all pet portraits.  Nothing else.

Born to Run is the rescue group I've been working with since last fall.  H and I offered to foster a greyhound coming from Korea, but that didn't turn out to be necessary.  Instead, we got Katie (then called Coco).  Our first foster dog.  Our first foster "failure" (meaning we adopted her ourselves after about a month!)

You can read more about the group on their website.  For now, I want to talk about the ART!

When I was collecting artists for this, I sent out invitations to a couple dozen of my list of favorites, and a few I discovered just looking around at the time.  I was blown away by the responses.  They're all SO different! (See samples and links to the artists here.)  Ceramic sculpture, batik, hand-thrown porcelain, paper mache, linocut printing and a classic graphite drawing.

What on earth was I going to contribute that would come up to the level of the varied uniquenesses?  I tossed around several ideas, each one more outrageously un-do-able than the last, and then it came to me.

Soft sculpture.  Yeah!

I'd done a bit of that, way back when, and really loved it, but moved on to new things (while I let my fingertips heal - I do not practice safe sewing!)  When the idea to use it for this jumped into my head, I got excited about the possibilities!  What style?  What materials?  Serious?  Silly?  Abstract??  Big?  Small?  Then I got to thinking about what kind of pet might be my assignment.  Heck, it could be an iguana or a ciclid! That opens up the possibilities even more!

I'm going to let you watch the process, when it happens, so stay tuned.  If you want to bid on my, or any of the other artists' offerings, go register for the auction, so you'll receive a notice to remind you when bidding starts on April 20th, at 9am Pacific time.

Next up: a return to Niccolo and MaeBella.