Doris: “The Housekeeper”

Once the head was out of the mould, I painted in the features and started to add the hair.

Painted head

The hands have been cast with a twisted wire armature inside them, they’re just out of the mould here and haven’t been trimmed yet. The real Doris wore nail varnish so I’ll paint that on.

Hands with flashing

Finished head minus glasses

I’m not sure what exactly what she wore on her feet, it may have been some sort of leatherette type slipper but I’ve chosen to make ones with a furry bit at the front. They’ve been cast in silicone and painted before the fur was added and trimmed.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to get the body shape just right and trying to recreate her stance. She has an aluminium wire armature at the moment but I’m going to have to replace it with a ball and socket one at some point. For the moment though, I’ll use this one to do some test animations with.

Twisted wire armatures

Luckily my local fabric shop had some ideal fabric to recreate her brown ‘slacks’, and I’ve given her a little sleeveless top to go with it as well as a dowdy grey blouse.

 

nearing completion

She’s nearing completion in the above photograph.

And finally, with glasses attached and a little walking stick to help her waddle along, she’s finished.

Doris with walking stick

A face that could curdle milk.

There’s some more pic’s of Doris in different poses in the ‘Pages’ section: Doris Slideshow

Doris Marshall

This character is based on an old lady who, in the guise of ‘housekeeper’, terrorized the inhabitants of an old Victorian house in Glasgow.

Although it was several years ago I still remember her beady little chameleon eyes behind thick rimmed glasses and her brown, bri-nylon slacks.

Sadly I never took a photograph of her – I wouldn’t dare – so I drew this sketch from memory (but it’s a near photographic likeness, honest)

Based on this drawing I started modeling the clay head and gnarly hands. I seem to remember that hers had quite blunt fingers with big nicotine stained fingernails that looked as if they’d been carved out of goat horn or something.

Knarly fingers

These are the clay ones ready to have a mould made of them and below, the mould for the glasses which I haven’t cast yet.

Continued soon when hopefully I’ll have time to do some more work on her…

Mould for glasses