Андрей Тарасенко

Vasilyeva Yulia Vyacheslavovna, Krasnoyarsk Territory, Krasnoyarsk

In our family, everyone is creative. You can't even imagine how much we love to embroider, knit, make crafts, draw! And dolls are my favorite hobby. I make them from different materials: fabric, thread, paper, plastic.
And I also make dolls from wood.
I love walking in the forest and picking up various snags.
I see them not as firewood, but as the future heroes of my new fairy tales.

I am not a master, I have not studied anywhere. She just graduated from the art school in absentia and passed the exam "Fine Arts. Decorative and applied art". Self-taught.

A piece of snag, a piece of bark, a root, a lump of clay - this is the raw material that I use to create my dolls. I want to share with you the secrets of working with wood.
Preparation of material
The tree I use is dry, well-dried (sometimes I use dead wood), then it does not crack and is well processed.
I clean the snags from the bark with a metal brush.
I soak pine and cedar snags for several hours in water to remove the resin. I dry it thoroughly so that the wood does not crack.
I saw the workpiece into parts with a carpenter's saw. I process the surface with a knife and sandpaper.
If I want to keep the natural color of the wood, I soak the parts in a solution of salt for 2 hours. Salt pulls out tannins from the wood and it becomes lighter. Then I wash the parts in water and dry them.
To give the wood a darker color, I use a mixture of coffee and vinegar. I put the parts in a solution for several hours, then rinse and dry them well.
Tools and Materials
I use the simplest tools in my work: a knife, chisels, sandpaper, a drill, a saw, a hammer. With the help of a drill and a saw, I make holes and cut out grooves (for hands, legs, head).
I cut out small details with a knife. I highlight the texture of the tree with chisels.
I use different types of sandpaper depending on what I am doing.
In the process, I also use wood glue to connect parts and PVA glue for priming the workpiece. It strengthens the wood and prevents cracking.
Examples of work
I make dolls of various sizes - from 10 cm to 1 m. They are all characters in my fairy tales. I bring the finished doll to life with natural materials - fur, wool, thread, pieces of fabric and leather.
From the snag left after the wind, I made Baba Yaga with a broom and a mortar. Snag with knots became Leshim. The root was Baba Yaga's hut.
At the exhibition in the city of Abakan, I saw a birch snag, which looked like a witch. For several months she stood in my workshop and the thought was born to make a doll.
She turned out to be stately, with a broom and in a hat. I made the broom from spruce branches. I wrapped the doll's body and legs with wool yarn. I attached a wig from sheep's wool.

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  Dolls are my fantasy, my fairy tale, my way of expressing myself in creativity. I am glad that I can share my work with people. I am proud of my dolls and my family is happy for me.
  I hope my experience will help others find their way to self-expression in creativity. I wish everyone good luck and success!