Sort Of Quarterly Report

I’d meant to do a first quarter report – an update of how work has been going in the studio.  Somehow March ended and April slipped silently by.  Now we’re half into May…

Think of this, then, as the rather early second quarter report…

Since January I have:

Prepared and sent out 11 proposal packages.

I’ve received 3 replies back: one rejection, one we-think-your-work-is-interesting-but-we’re-booked-until-2016-please-reapply-next-year, and one we’ll-be-perusing-packages-in-July.  If you think of it, send some good juju my way for the remaining packages out in the ether.

Worked regularly in the studio, averaging 15 hours per week.

This is less than my hoped for 20 hours per week, but WAY more than I managed to accomplish this quarter last year.  I’m happy to report that I’ve recently changed my weekly schedule and this slight change has made it easier for me to complete my 20 studio hours.

Made good progress on the Bat Project.

I began work on the project in December of 2012.  So far I’ve transferred 500 faces onto muslin:

Sewn and turned 2000 tiny hands:

Stuffed fiberfill into 750 of those tiny hands:

My previous experience of destroying hands when I tried to stuff the delicate thumbs motivated me to come up with a solution.  I decided to seal the thumb seams with mat medium (using a size 00 brush!) prior to stuffing.  It took two weeks to seal 2000 hands but the interim step was well worth it – so far I haven’t ruined any. 🙂 Much better odds than my initial attempt at making such small scale appendages, where half of them were rendered unusable after I manhandled them.

I was quite anxious of being able to get stuffing into the miniscule thumbs.  Even the tip of my commercial stuffing tool was too large.  My anxiety quickly dissolved once I crafted an ad hoc thumb-stuffing tool: a large, rough-surfaced paper clip that “grabs” the fill and pokes it deftly into place.  Couldn’t be quicker or easier.

Predictably, going is slow on a piece of this magnitude.  I’ve been keeping my spirits up by listening to audio books as I’m working (currently, the Harry Potter series read by Stephen Fry – so enjoyable).

I’m not yet certain if I’m keeping to schedule.  My gut says I’ve got 12 more months to go.  I should have a better idea in a few months of whether I’m lagging behind or not.  Either way I’ll soon be working on wee bodies and then…hoods ‘n’ wings!

How’s your year progressing?  Are you keeping up to schedule on your projects?  Do share in the comments!