This is an old sketch from 2003 exemplifying my attempts at figuring out how to connect my first porcelain dolls.I started out with a very traditional way of making porcelain dolls; lower porcelain extremities with cloth and wire connecting them to the body. I only made two dolls this way before I moved on to making fully porcelain, ball-jointed dolls. I found that I wanted a doll that could move and be played with freely, while the cloth and wire method allowed for only basic and non-expressive movement. Porcelain dolls made this way are better suited for sitting on the shelf like dressed figurines and that wasn't enough for me. So, I abandoned it and began developing a different way.A lot of people ask me how I learned making dolls and I never really know how give a simple answer, because it wasn't a simple, straightforward journey. It's not like I went to a bookstore one day, picked up a book and went:" Oh, look everything I need to know about making dolls is right here. I'll just read it and become a doll artist!" It wasn't like that. I figured it out as I went. I'm still figuring it out. You just have to want something bad enough and then you can turn the world over to get it.My present method of making articulated dolls is combination of several different techniques and a result of years of research, observation and trial and error. I can't attribute it to any single source or even fifty sources, because I looked and studied and absorbed and discarded a lot of information for a long time before I put it all together in a comprehensive technique. Thank goodness for the Internet- I honestly don't know how artists did it before.
ENCHANTED DOLL Marina Bychkova