Angela goes 3 dimensional!

Today's art prompt is to work the opposite of what you normally do.  If you are a 2-D artist, then work in 3-D, and vice versa.  I almost never work in 3 dimensions and had one disastrous clay sculpture experience in high school about 25 years ago. But I have had a 3-D project idea in mind for about three years now.  If you know me, you know that I never procrastinate and I that I'm a classic over achiever.  So when I DO decide to procrastinate... well I over achieve on procrastinating!  I really had no idea how to begin this project.  I was really glad for this art prompt because I needed more than just a friendly nudge in the right direction: Project "Seaweed Maiden".

Although I've got a long way to go, I can appreciate that I've started.  Finally! The above picture shows the base layers of felted wool in a sea foam green.  I'll continue building up the layers in all the colors of seaweed. Then I'll add some hand felted embellishments, including an octopus.

This project started to take shape for me when I friend gifted a bag of yarn to me, with the challenge that I use the yarns together in one project.

The next step was to hand dye a huge lot of wool batting (still in the shape of the sheep).

Once the wool was rinsed and dry I started to pat it into the basic shape around a form.

Next, I began wet felting the wool batting into a more specific shape.

There she is!  I'll spend the next few weeks building up layers of green, aqua and brown roving.  I'll use a combination of wet felting and needle felting. Once the shape is complete I'll begin adding other elements.  Stay tuned. Perhaps the Seaweed Maiden will show up again in another art prompt blog in the near future. I'm quite excited about getting to work on this and the danger of further procrastination has safely passed.

Roving that has been hand dyed by Ryan at Knotty by Nature.