Monster High Ghoulia - A Warrior Goddess Doll Custom (Part 1)
Have you ever worked with someone else on a creative project? What about on a doll custom? For me it's been a long time since I collaborated with anyone (about 10 years ago at Art School, come to think of it). And collaborating on a doll custom? Never.
But my hubby Chris and I have set ourselves a new creative challenge - working together on a doll project!
So what's the project? Well, he's been doing a lot of drawing recently. In some of his drawings, he was exploring how to represent female power and strength. In particular, he was interested in warrior women, and he came across Adrestia, the daughter of Ares - the god of war.
Adrestia (also known as Nemesis in the Roman pantheon) is 'she who cannot be escaped' - a goddess of just retribution and sublime balance between good and evil. And to restore balance she would go to war, accompanying her father Ares.
I liked the sound of this righteous warrior goddess.
So when Chris was telling me about her while he was showing me his doodles of his various angelic or demonic, fierce women, I suddenly thought, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool to do a goddess of war as a doll!"
So I got to work. I'd been wanting to do a Monster High custom - a Ghoulia Yelps that I'd already removed the factory face-up from and started to blush, and this was perfect for it.
We wanted to incorporate the symbol of the ram, because of its aggressive power. We had it in our heads that Ares and Aries were connected in mythology, but as it turns out, that's not the case. Aries is the Ram whose fleece Jason and the Argonauts had to obtain to prove himself to be the rightful king of Thessaly and has nothing to do with Ares the god of war.
No matter. For our interpretation with a massive spiral head-sculpt, it'll look awesome :D
Here's what I did to get started:
I cut the back of the head off with a scalpel blade and pulled out any remaining hair from the inside of the head with tweezers.
What I did next is an important bit if you ever want to sculpt something structural off a doll's head: I added a layer of the modelling compound I use (about 3mm thick) around the whole inside of the head. This is to make the head solid. As you can imagine, trying to build onto the squishy head of a doll would make anything you mould on fall right off!
Next I started moulding around the outside of the head with the epoxy modelling compound. What I use is Aves Apoxie Sculpt* which you can buy in the UK here or in the US here. It's a two-part, ari-drying epoxy putty that I really like using, because it's much less brittle than stuff like Milliput, doesn't shrink too much and you can sand it once dry.
*However - some people get an allergic reaction from Aves Apoxie, resulting in cracked skin and swollen eyelids, so you must use nitrile gloves (not latex).
I wasn't sure how to make it hollow at first, but decided to glue some bits of polysterene I cut into curved shapes around the wire so that I wouldn't be using a ton of Apoxie and so the spiral wouldn't get too heavy.
This is as far as I've got for now. The shape of the spiral needs a bit more work now that it's dry, and after that I have a bunch of sanding to do to make it nice and smooth.
In any case, so far so good!
Next up will be creating some armour pieces, as Chris has already been designing some outfits for her. Find out more in the next post!
If you enjoyed reading this even just a tiny bit as much as I enjoyed sharing it, please do let me know! Have you ever tried sculpting a doll head? What materials do you use? Share some love with a like or a comment below!
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