Sneak peek at new "Jaggedy-Rag" dolls

 

What do you get when you rub a cartoonist and a seamstress together?

Here's a  sneak peek at some of the dolls we're working on at the moment. They're bound for our Etsy.com site, arriving in a week or so, we hope. With Halloween right around the corner, we thought this would be a good time to bring these out. There will be a total of 13 in this series entitled "Jaggedy Rag Dolls". Each will have a name and a short "back story". There will be seven of the masculine persuasion and six feminine. We wanted to create some easy and economic-to-make, but not-too-home-made-looking dolls that would be the kind of thing Wednesday Adams (Adams Family) might carry around. Kind of Creepy-Cute. These are really a continuation of the "Creepy Clown" series I started about 10 years ago. That's why some of them have clown noses or neck ruffles. These dolls are not intended for children, though they are probably safe, but wouldn't stand up to the rigors of play, and they can't be laundered. They are more like the "art-doll" variety. These are all original Tesserak Studios designs. They are all hand made by me and my wife, Ellen Wight. Each is about 10" tall. We used natural and hand-dyed Angora on the ones with real hair. They have an accidental distressed look but we think it looks better than the perfectly printed versions. It makes them look like they've been around for a while. We're thinking of asking for $35 or $40 per doll. 

We'd love to hear what you think, so please let us hear your comments and critiques. Seriously, we're not looking for compliments as much as we're looking for your real first impression. So, come on, tell us what you really think. Also, I'll answer any questions you might have about this series.

My "Jansen" walking mechanism

I like making sculpture that moves or folds or that employ natural forces. I wanted to design a wind-driven sculpture of a horse walking. The wind-driven drive mechanism is simple enough to design but how to make the legs move?
I found this Dutch artist/engineer genius, Theo Jansen and one of the walking mechanisms he designed for one of his "Strand Beasts" (look him up on YouTube, he's amazing). So, I thought I'd try to build one of his mechanisms. I found a picture of one of his linkages and from that I made a drawing, and from that I made measurement and scaled it up. The photo at right shows the result of my prototype build. The prototype in the photo at right is about 11 inches tall. I wanted to see if it would work before I went to all the trouble to cut it all out of metal. I used Popsicle sticks and tongue depressors, a couple longer pieces of thin wood and a circle cut out of thin plywood. I used small steel bolts as linkage pins. It's a little stiff but it does work.
So, what we have here is what would be the linkage mechanism for the right half of a quadruped, front and rear legs. Four linkage arms connect to a peg on the little circle. As the circle turns, it drives the mechanism. This mechanism is designed to have the "feet" on the ground as much as possible for each cycle of the drive wheel. It's gait is not horse-like. It's more like a crab or a spider. But it might work for a stylized sculpture of a walking horse. However, my experiment is a success. I can build one, and it works the way it was designed.
If you had 4, 6, or 8 of these in a chassis, with solar powered electric motors and a little bit of electronics you could build a walking, radio controlled little robot, though steering it might be a problem.

My hand-carved wooden spoons

I saw some home made wooden kitchen implements in an antique store and I thought, "How hard would it be to make one of those?" The answer is: "With a couple of the right tools, it's not easy but it's not extremely difficult". Each one took me about two hours working time over two days. The photo above shows my first three attempts: top to bottom, eucalyptus, birch and cherry. For each one I chose a log from my firewood pile, made a cut length-wise on the outside of the log for the spoon blank. I cut that into the rough shape of a spoon. Then I carved the bowl of the spoon, then the back of the spoon, then the handle. Then there was shaping with a hand rasp and files, and a whole lot of sanding. These spoons haven't been oiled yet. Top to bottom the spoons are 10", 11" and 12" long. I could whip out one of these babies in no time with power tools but I really enjoy making things by hand.
First attempt: eucalyptus was not a good choice. It is hard to carve, splits and cracks easily and not real nice looking wood. And no, eucalyptus wood doesn't smell like cough drops, though the leaves do.
Second attempt: Birch wood is a soft "hardwood". I didn't choose a good piece of this wood from my wood pile; it had insect damage (as you can see on the handle). I went ahead with it anyway. Birch is relatively easy to carve and it is very light. I think this wood is too soft and absorbent to be a good spoon.
Third attempt: I found a nice aged log of cherry wood; a heavy wood,very hard, very nice tight beautiful grain. This wood was a dream to work with. It carves nicely, with good sharp tools, and finishes beautifully. This made a far superior spoon in the end. That's what I'll use on the next one.
So why would I go to all this trouble to make a spoon I can by for a couple of bucks? To see if I could; and I made the other two because I could; and every time I make one, it's better than the last one. Each time I make one I learn something, and at the same time I get better at it. It's a satisfying experience.

Another version of a Tetrahedron Ring

This is a copy of version #5 (I think) of my Tetrahedron Ring series. I think I have about eight different designs for tetrahedron rings. You can see a video of more of these on my YouTube site:
Tesserak Studios YouTube Site

It's made from 1" aluminum angle stock (six pieces) and six steel hinges. Though these six pieces are not tetrahedrons, they are based on two halves of center planes through a tetrahedron, at right angles to each other. I know, that's a little difficult to visualize, but essentially what you see here could be described as the skeleton of half a tetrahedron.
Anyway, what originally interested me about this design is: here is a ring, with each hinge at a right angle to its neighbor yet with this arrangement you can get a toroidal rotation that seems to defy logic.
I don't know of any useful application of this mechanism. However it fits right into my interactive sculpture philosophy; sculpture that you are supposed to play with.

Here's a video of one of these:

My new home made bench

I made this bench out of recycled redwood and cedar lumber. I need a bench for just outside my Restoration Studio office and this project would use up this lumber and free up some much needed space in my shop. The photo above was taken just after completion, before filling and sanding (filling only the worst looking gouges and scars in the old wood). If it didn't already have that ugly "stain" (which is really "stain" colored paint) I'd leave it natural. I'm going to paint it a nice dark "forest green" to match a bunch of other stuff around here that is the same green. It'll look great with two or three coats of paint, and this thing should last for a long time.

The new doll project is proceeding on schedule. Along the way we're learning a lot about design and production of something of this nature. By now, we are way past the fun stage and full into production; by hand, that is; printing, stuffing, sewing, hair dying, etc. Sometimes things don't go as planned and you have to decide if you can use it to your advantage, or go back a step or two and re-do that part. First you love the idea, then you like it again, then you think you're crazy for taking on this project, then you like it again. I just hope we end on a "like it". Anyway, I hope to have some of them finished within a week, and the rest of them a week or so after that. I'll keep you posted.

A new series of soft dolls from Tesserak Studios

We are in the development stage of our next little project; a series of 12 small stuffed dolls. We haven't nailed down a name for the series yet but the one we like so far is "Jaggedy-Rag Dolls" (Ellen's idea). I guess that means I'll have to come up with names and back stories for each one too (groan). We created this series specifically for our new Tesserak Studios shop on Etsy.com. We wanted to make the kind of doll you might find in the Addams Family kid's toy box. Not cute, but not too scary either. Something that doesn't look too homemade. It could be the perfect accessory to your Comic Con costume. Though our dolls will be safe for kids, we didn't have children in mind when we created them.
The Jaggedy-Rag dolls will be based on a doll I designed in 2003 and Ellen made for me in 2006, pictured in the photo shown here. He was part of my clown series of art-dolls. We thought this guy would be something we could make by hand and still keep the price down.
We're thinking this will be a series of 10 or 12, ten-inch dolls. Half of them male, half of them female. Each will be one-of-a-kind. Each will be printed, stuffed and stitched by hand. Some of the faces will be hand painted or drawn. The unique print patterns on each doll are created in-house.
We're well into the design stage at this point. It's been fun working on these designs with Ellen, my sewing genius. We hope to have some finished dolls in about a month. We'll keep you posted . . . in our posts.

Found in my backyard: obsidian stone tool

Yesterday, while my wife Ellen was cleaning her horse corral, she found this stone. It is obsidian, like a piece of black glass, which is clearly evident when held up to the light. I've examined it under magnification and it is undoubtedly a napped stone.  This stone appears to be the middle section of a small spear point, or perhaps a scraping tool. I'm leaning toward a hunting point because both long edges of the stone have been napped. I will definitely be looking to find the missing sections of this stone. This is a pretty exciting find from our backyard. Below is a view of the other side of the stone.

Guitar case project: finished

I had this guitar case laying around in my shop half finished for almost a year. I made it for my main electric guitar, a custom made strat-style guitar, shown in the photo below. The reason it took so long is because late stages of its construction involve a lot of heavy duty spray glue and pretty much puts my shop out of use until the glue dries, and it takes up an entire work bench. I had to wait until I had no other projects, or restoration work, in the shop. So, here it is finally finished. The box has pine sides with plywood "door-skin" front and back. Inside, a hardwood neck brace and storage box, short black fake fur lining. The outside is covered with exterior upholstery fabric, all hardware is brass. Total, actual, construction time was about a week. The trick is to build a case that is as light as possible but still strong.

For the guitar nuts: I could never afford a custom made guitar. They are crazy-expensive. One day, visiting Mark Johnson's (MJ Guitars) shop behind a music store, I was going through his scrap bin and I found this blue metal-flake painted guitar body. I asked him "What's wrong with this?" He said it was a bass guitar body routed for strat style pickups and he tossed it because nobody wanted it. We got to talking and in the end I got the body and all the hardware for it in exchange for me faux-finish painting about a half dozen guitar bodies for him. In addition he'd clear coat this body after I painted it. You can't see it in this photo but up close this finish has several shades of blue and violet sponge-painted over the blue metal flake, with flecks of gold running through it. I looks like a block of lapis lazuli. The excellent neck, made by local luthier Jim Surles (in exchange for painting a couple of guitars) is unfinished maple (except for the front of the headstock) and has an ebony fretboard. Locking Spurtzel tuners, graphite nut, EMG pickups, active humbucker at the bridge and a Kahler trem (which I'm not crazy about). Jim assembled it and did all the set up for me. A custom guitar made by two different custom guitar makers! All I had to do is paint some guitars, which isn't exactly a piece of cake, but I can come up with a really good custom paint job easier than I can come up with the money for a custom made guitar. This thing rocks like a Mo Fo!

Folding cube #3.2: with paint

Here's the folding cube from my last post, this time with a coat of paint to better show how this thing functions. Feedback always welcome.

Folding sculpture: folding cubes #3.2

I've been making "folding" sculptures for some time now. I keep finding new ones to build or explore further possibilities of ones I've already made. This week I made a larger version of one of my folding sculptures. It is made up of eight redwood blocks, each one 3.5 inches. They are hinged together with eight standard issue brass door hinges. The eight cubes stacked together make a larger 7 inch cube. I describe the way this unit functions as a "rotating" fold because, as you can see in the video, it has the appearance of continuously "unfolding". Unfortunately, the finished product is very heavy and not a lot of fun to play with. The whole thing weighs in at 9 lbs.! But, it does work as intended. Pictured here is the piece just after completion. Not very pretty. I do intend to paint it, and I'll post another video when I do.
Changing the scale of a piece of sculpture can have a dramatic effect on our perception of it. The original version of this model is made of one-inch cubes. It is the perfect hand-size version and is fun to manipulate. Double that scale and I begin to see the sculpture in a new way. What if each of these cubes was a box with a lid? It might make an unusual jewelry box.
What if it was big enough to sit on? This piece could be an interesting folding furniture design. If each of the eight blocks was a 20 inch cube, You'd end up with something about the size of a couch that could be folded into about a half dozen different configurations. If you had two of these units, you'd have even more possibilities.
Now I'm wondering if I could make a chain of these units. Could it be done? How would that behave? Hmmm. . . . . .

a little Sundial project

I made this little sundial as a little test project. I found an app ("shadows" at www.shadowspro.com) that can make a whole bunch of different kinds of sundials, and I wanted to try it out. I had some scrap metal pieces laying around that, with a little cut and trim and number stamping, using a template I made with the Shadows app, and I ended up with a little sundial that goes on a vertical South facing wall on the back of my house. The app works by using Google Earth to find the latitude and longitude of your house, and adjusting for the angle of the wall you intend to mount your sundial on, it then renders a sundial template, including the correct angle for the style (the thing that casts the shadow on the dial). So, with this little app I could design a template for a wide range of sundial types customized for the exact intended location anywhere in the world. There's also a free version available, so you could try making your own sundial.

Another new mobile'

I made another little mobile' a couple of days ago. This one is all metal, made from a brass candle stick, a big nail and some steel strapping material, all painted a satin black. It's about 9x9 inches. I'd like to work more with metal on these mobiles, and to work on larger projects . . . but . . . I don't have the room. So, I make small mock-ups instead. You can see all my mobiles on my web site: Tesserak Studios.
My mobiles were featured on a public access channel broadcast from San Francisco, on my brothers show, "Jazzcult". Thank to my brother Rich. I hope to upload some of it to my YouTube channel soon. I'll let you know here when that happens.
Ellen is still working on parts for the armor she's making for herself and her draft horse. No pictures to show yet. Will post when I get something to look at.

Back in the studio again: new stuff

I've been away from the studio for a while. I made a trip to the Spokane, WA. area to help out with a family matter. Other than that we've been really busy in the restoration studio lately. That's a good thing. There is also a documentary film maker who wants to do a film about our restoration business. We should start shooting next month. I'm really looking forward to that.
I did manage to make a few new things though. Small projects, mostly personal ones but I'll cover them here anyway.
I made a new mobile', my 35th in this series. This one is a standing model made of painted wood (see photo at left). The balanced elements are arranged in an ascending fashion as opposed to the usual descending arrangement. You can see all of my mobiles on my art web site: http://www.tesserak.net/html/mobiles.htm
My brother Rich has a show on public access TV in San Francisco, CA. and he came up last year and shot some footage of my mobile's and ended up putting it on his show. I'll add that video, or portions of it, on my Youtube channel soon.

"Potpourri" collage series, 2012

I finally finished the 18 piece collage series I've been working on, (off and on), for most of 2012. I'm not particularly pleased with the end result but I can live with it. Some pages are better than others. The "template" at the beginning of the series (image at left) is a photo of the template used to start each page of this series.  See the series on my web site at the following link:
http://www.tesserak.net/Potpor_ser_web/index.htm
Feedback is always welcome. Questions will be answered.

There are 18 pieces in this series, titled "Potpourri". I started with 8x10 in. cardboard. Each one painted with 2 to 4 colors of spray paint, using the template shown above (or its negative, a stencil). The template could be left, or right oriented, or flipped and rotated, and though it may be barely visible on some pages, it is there. That was the base upon which everything else is built. That is about the only unifying thread in this series. There is no theme, and no underlying message to this series. I leave it up to the viewer to make their own connections, and to find a meaning on their own. Though technically this is not pure collage, because it involves rubber stamping, transfers, drawing and a little painting, it is mostly collage. Technically I'd describe it more accurately as mixed media.This is not a medium I work in very much. It's a little more time consuming and tedious to create than a lot of the other things I do.

Smashed my finger

Last Monday I smashed the index finger on my left hand while pruning trees in my yard. A large branch I cut off fell and landed on my left hand, which was holding onto another branch to keep me from falling out of the tree. It's a good thing I had on heavy duty work gloves or I might not have any meat on that finger right now. I was almost afraid to take that glove off, it hurt so bad. I thought for sure it was broken. When I took the glove off, it looked like I had a large black olive stuck on the end of my finger (I'll spare you the picture). It was VERY painful. I packed ice around it for the rest of the day. It's a week later now and the bruising is starting to go away. The feeling has returned to the finger, and I can move it without pain. I still can't use it yet, but in another week it should be back to normal.
The problem now is: what do I do in the  meantime? I can only play slide guitar for now, but that gets old kind of fast. I play my guitar every day usually, so not being able to play is more than a bit distressing. I'm right handed, so I can still draw and paint. So, I've been working on that 18 pc. collage series I've been working on for the past year (on and off). I did more work on them in the past 4 days than I have in the past 6 months. They are almost done. I've been working on this series for too long. I'm kind of tired of looking at it. Working on a collage is like doing an ad lib in slow motion.

4 Small watercolor paintings

I was trying for six paintings but I only got four done. I think these each took between one and two hours to paint. As I said earlier, watercolor isn't my forte'. I've listed these in the order I painted them. I did the first two after dinner on Saturday and the other two Sunday evening. These are painted on 4x6 in. rough textured watercolor paper. These samples are about half the size of the originals. It's not easy to get a nice smooth painting on a rough piece of paper this small. It is a little fun to get in there, push some paint around and try to make something anyway.
I painted these from memory and made no pencil sketch on the paper ahead of painting. These were simple enough compositions that I didn't need a guide. I'll have to paint a lot more of these to get the hang of it again. Better planning would yield better paintings. I'll try doing some from photographs next time.
So, here's a quick list of what I painted:
The first one, "Mustard Fields" is a rather plain but typical Sonoma county view.
The second painting, "Garden" is an impressionist inspired experiment.
The third one is a quick rendition of a beach. Only three colors used here.
The last one, a view of "Yosemite Valley", is not quite correct, but I was working from memory, not a photo.

Painting a few watercolors.

I will be making a few small watercolor paintings this weekend. I've had a block of 4x6 in. watercolor paper sitting here for a long time so I might as well put it to use.
I haven't painted in watercolors in at least 20years. It's not my favorite medium. It's not at all like painting with oils or acrylics. It requires a whole different way of thinking about painting. I usually draw very little or not at all on a canvas before I start painting. With watercolors, you really want to know where your colors are going to go before you paint them.
When painting in watercolor, I like to do landscape, architecture and gardens. Those should be drawn in first. Sometimes I draw on the painting after the paint dries. I'm not planning that for these.
For these paintings, I'll be doing mostly landscapes, and I'll be working from memory. This is all really just practice for me; reintroducing myself to the medium. I'm going to try to do about six of these small paintings. I'll post photos of them when they're done.

Ellen's Armor: sword and scabbard

Here is Ellen's completed scabbard. The sword is big; (49 in. long). I made a wooden core for the scabbard and Ellen covered it with alligator embossed leather, hand cut and sewn. Fancy lacing down one side. Studded leather strips cover seams in the leather, and buckles for attaching the scabbard to a belt (or sash). This is a "display" sword, not a real one but you could really hurt somebody with it. It is real steel. Ellen will be using this prop with her knight outfit that I posted a photo of earlier. There is armor in the making for her horse as well. She'll use this outfit for parades and events. I'll get photos of her as wearing all this stuff as soon as I can get her to put it all on. It takes about a half an hour just to put all this stuff on.

Start of a new year

Now that the holidays are over I can get back to getting some work done here.
I worked  a little more on my 18 pc. collage series. It's one of those projects that take a long time to complete because I only work on it when I don't have anything else to do. That's because it's so tedious, for one thing. It takes a long time for each piece to even start to look like anything interesting. If I keep chipping away at it, it eventually gets done. It is now at the stage where it's beginning to look interesting.
Ellen completed the work on the scabbard for her medieval sword (part of a complete costume armor project). I'll get a photo of it up here soon. Now she's working on the leather armor for her horse and it's nearly finished. We're working on a shield as well.
In Dec. I recorded two test recordings of new blues tunes I wrote: "I Gotta Move On" and "Hard Not To Be Bad". Both are played in open G tuning. These recordings are just "sketches" for now, not good enough to post on line.
I want to make some more paintings but they are going to have to be small ones. I just don't  have the room at the moment to work on, or store, anything large. I'm thinking landscapes, or non representational things.
I really have to post more photos in these posts.