The Milkmaid by Vermeer. Are you a fan?

Hi everyone!

Remember my post about a papermache cutting board? Yesterday I started to play with it, adding one of the hearts, making a knife, etc and that reminded me of when I made my Milkmaid doll inspired by one of my favorite painters Johannes Vermeer.

The primary idea of making something of the kind was because I wanted to try doing some miniatures after seeing so much of different ones online. Wanted to try food, etc. So I picked up "The Milkmaid" by Vermeer because, also, its one of those paintings that fascinates me since early teenage years.

For its scale all started with the doll itself.
As usual wrapped toilet paper on to a wire structure, face and hands are air drying clay, underskirt structure is newspaper and outer skirt is used printing paper whilst her upper clothes are a mix between air drying clay and toilet paper. Cloth folds are redefined with air drying clay and then all covered with liquid cold porcelain (+water and glue than starch).

In order to know the measures for the table I thought I'd first need to have all the miniatures ready and so I started to try the pot making.
In my mind I had been studying a way of making pots with a paper structure thus avoiding making them all just in air drying clay - by then I thought that any of my creations without paper wouldn't be one of my creations (lol). So I made a small thick newspaper roll on to which I glued toilet paper rolls. The idea was to show some "hollowness"... With the toilet paper I kind of modeled the body and covered it with very watery air drying clay (air drying clay butter? Almost!)

For the upper edge I made it with a piece of cardboard. All assembled and finished, made the handle with air drying clay and covered all with liquid cold porcelain and coated it with some brown acrylic paint.

On the actual painting there's what seems to be a milk pot with a very interesting texture. To make it was a great fun. Spent hours online trying to find pictures of a similar one and found a German beer jug. The construction was very similar to the pot above. The lid and those little reliefs are air drying clay and the metal structure that enables the lid to open (ie on a normal, human scale one, not on this one) is cereal cardboard painted with metallic grey.

Made another pot too, a lower one.

  The basket was "weaved" with thin toilet paper rolls, whilst the bread was made by doing a ball of aluminium foil which was covered with toilet paper. Once dried I've applied watery air drying clay on the edges, sanded it leaving some of the paper's roughness "raw" in the middle and then played with some washes of acrylic paint (brown, yellow, white) 

The knife is cereal cardboard and toilet paper covered with liquid cold porcelain painted with acrylic white, metallic gold and grey paints.

As always I wanted to a add a little something "extra" and as I had found the most delightful delft plate with the face of Netherlands Stadtholder William (future William III of England) whilst being a kid from exactly the same date of Vermeer's painting, thought of including it on the scene thus dating and identifying its dutch origins (no political statement) I made it with air drying clay and tried to play around with its original image. It became "cute" but not cute enough so I used it, still, but to hold the bread crumbs. On my sculpture though its not bead crumbs, its several pastéis de nata. Pastel de nata is one of Portugal's sweet delicacy and I don't know why, felt like trying doing some and add there...
Made them by wrapping the edge of a writing pen with tiny strips of newspaper and glue and the egg yoke filling with toilet paper. Leaving the edges "raw", covered the rest with liquid cold porcelain and acrylic paints.

Table is made from cardboard whilst the table cloth is newspaper re-arranged with some air drying clay on the folds...

Table ready time to glue all the minis on!

 In the end and because I didn't like the original lower pot I made another one, broke the first one on purpose and glued it on the base. Why? To create some chaos in such zen, quiet world, of course!

Oh, the base is, as all the bases of my dolls, papermache covered with white bitumen and liquid cold porcelain as final finish. The feet are also papermache rolls and the decorations are thin toilet paper rolls painted with metallic gold paint.

Took me ages to built this as you can imagine, but was well worth it, don't you think?

Still available on my shop @ etsy.com/shop/chezpedro.

If you want to see more of my pretties please visit myroyaldolls.wix.com/myroyaldolls .

Thank you!