Poseable manikins

I’ve been busy making two of those poseable wooden manikins that artists use to draw from into small puppet versions of two actors, a man and a woman. Its been fiddly, since to make the proportions right, I had change the shapes of the bodies, and the length of the limbs, which in turn means undoing the joints and shortening some of the springs that tension them . Really, the manikins are quite odd around the hips. I read that these deluxe guys have a lot more movement than the wooden ones, but they just make me laugh! And the woman is frightening!

Its a strange range of other poseable figures you can get supposedly to draw from. Horses, dinosaurs and giraffes are carried by our local art store. I know people buy them just because they are cool, but I like to imagine instead that there is a thriving subculture of ‘giraffe artists’ for instance.

I’m not participating in the Month of Softies this time. Partly I’ve been short on time, but I also wasn’t inspired. And while I think moving it to Flickr was more than understandable, I find that I feel differently about it over there. I’m not sure why.

Flying Spaghetti Monster

From south eastern Australia, possible evidence that the Flying Spaghetti Monster was known to ancient peoples:

Colour-in Canberra

tcb

Urban services here in Canberra is running a competition for the opportunity to participate in painting designs on 30 traffic controller boxes around the city. Its a good idea; I hope to put in an entry. The competition was launched a few days ago with the unveiling of this first painted box by Franki Sparke. It’s at the corner of Limestone Avenue and Wakefield Avenue in Ainslie. I’ll have to go for a drive and take a look – I wonder what’s on the other side?

Manufacturing a Yellow Hound

BiffManufacturing a Yellow Hound is a short online film showing the process of making this cool plaster dog sculpture. The armature is bundles of foil squished into shape and joined with masking tape. The shape is then covered with plaster bandage and painted. This elephant and bee are made the same way.

I found the yellow hound at Naive Knitting where the maker, Martha Wasacz, explains how the dog came about and fitted in with her thoughts about an open source policy towards crafting. I think that’s how it works, too.

Update 2015: broken links

Quilts: Alison Horridge

Kath at red current has been blogging about the Craft & Quilt Fair held last weekend, and mentioned really liking a quilt made by Alison Horridge. Here are pictures of three more of Alison’s quilts.

Night/Baby

This is beautiful.Thanks so much, Mimi. I also love this new one. What is it with me and insects at the moment?

Thanks

Thanks to Jose at titereblog for pointing out to me a few weeks ago that I could put a Creative Commons licence on my photos at Flickr.

I’m reminded of Lawrence Lessig‘s free culture presentation, which has the refrain:

*Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.
*The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.
*Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.
*Ours is less and less a free society.