Doll's House
Coloured pencil over paper stained with gouache, 12 x 12 inches, 2003.
'Dolls House' - drawing by Nancy Farmer.
In this picture I sort of imagined that the dolls had a life of their own - perhaps they can move around and actually 'live' in the Doll's House - when no-one is looking. But then of course they are completely at the little girl's mercy when she is there, because of course they can't move if anyone is looking at them, because that would be against the rules, and the poor little things are quite helpless.
And children are not really nice, you know...
'Dolls House', close-up detail - drawing by Nancy Farmer.
This picture took a surprisingly long time to do - first I mapped out the perspective of the Doll's House, as mathematically correct perspective, and then I bent it in on itself, so you get more depth and the curved perspective wraps around the viewer. And then I started on all the little details of the patterened fabrics and so on.
I like working with worlds in sort of enclosed spaces - another one like this is 'Maze' (click the thumbnail to the left) - in that case the perspective was far more exacting, though again it was subtly curved.