Costume sketch

Beautiful gold fabric

Lovely offcut bought cheap. Shimmers enough to confuse my camera sensors!

This hat looks like a bobble hat. Not sure that's appropriate.

...and I think even more so in colour...

I like the warm richness of the pencil against the coolness of scribbled paper. Floating it is...

Costumes

Back in the newly cleared out shed with a new table for the sewing machine.

In the meantime, I lost a puppet head today, as it was purloined by a member of the public from a gilding workshop - shocking!



I had left it to be covered in (faux) gold leaf, and returned to find a schoolboy had taken it home. Farewell!

Scientist assembled

Scientist is now put together with his own hands and head, but no costume yet.

The final mounting shown uses a bamboo cane for mounting the head with the hands mounted on bamboo skewers. All three are glued into place using a hot glue gun.

This is a two fingered operation. i.e. it uses a thumb and forefinger in the two arms, but no finger in the puppet head. This method is not as symmetrical as using the standard three fingered glove operation (forefinger in head, thumb and second finger in the arms)

This is significant because the arms are not symmetrical, the puppet cannot be used on eather hand as effectively. This may mean considering each puppet as they will appear in the plot, so that the correct puppet is on the correct hand at any one time.

Assembling scientist body parts

Gluing hand into place for Scientist using a hot glue gun. The hand is mounted on a tiny bamboo extension rod (not visible here) to keep the arm sleeve rigid in use, but light to operate

Puppet body material

I have retrieved forlorn dead puppets from the loft, and notice the fabric is very heavy. My current glove puppet test bodies have been suffering from floppy arms, under the weight of the Fimo hands. It occurred to me that soft fabric is where they are going wrong...a-ha!

Judy in another Judy's wig

Here is the latest Judy, with a previous Judy's wig on. Its a bit massive, and my hand holding it looks rather blue and dead in this photo, I must say!

Dead judy's wig

This wig belonged to a previous Judy made in 2000, and since eaten by rats whilst in storage in the loft - Yikes!
I was thinking I perhaps should only create puppets for Micro Mr Punch strictly from new materials, but decided that was not really in the theatrical spirit of reusing anything that was to hand.
I will post a pic of new judy in dead Judy's wig perhaps!


Dead judy's wig
Originally uploaded by rosemarybeetle

Varnishing eight hands

Varnishing eight hands
Originally uploaded by rosemarybeetle

Out in the lovely early evening sun...

More hands ready to varnish

More hands ready to varnish
Originally uploaded by rosemarybeetle

Shot in the shed. Another batch of slightly eery hands...

Policeman costume

Policeman costume
Originally uploaded by rosemarybeetle

Created on iPhone app: "Brushes" on the train

Piccies from iPhone

Piccies from iPhone
Originally uploaded by rosemarybeetle

This was a test of a rather tanned looking hand from my phone. Focus
is picking up the ground. Hmm...