I've been sick as a dog since Saturday, but I finally feel better today so that's a good thing. That means I can finally mail out the last two commissions I had completed. Either way, I repainted my new girl yesterday and finally documented her this morning. She is a Limhwa Lily in normal skin. I'm really impressed with her posing, the MSD Limhwa girl body really is a treasure. It moves very smoothly and holds poses nicely. I haven't even really bothered to think about sueding her. Her buttlocks are a little finicky, but they do work to keep her sitting upright. Overall, I am very pleased with her.
Now for the FYI: I'm holding a free face up raffle on my Tumblr. The rules and everything are in this post. Since I'm all out of commissions I thought it would be fun to hold another raffle. I tend to greatly enjoy them. Either way, if you would like to try and get a free face up from me and have a tumblr, like and reblog that post!
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I finished up two commissions today, one that I have had for ages sitting with me from a friend that had given me artistic license to do whatever I wanted to on her Dollmore Gem Doll Dona. I also worked on another friend's Dollzone June. Now for some pictures of the two! First up we have the Dollzone June. My friend wanted her to have freckles and I gave her some of my premium eyelashes, which are pretty but such a pain to put on. They are actually human fake eyelashes that I simply trim to doll sized. Rather sad that this sculpt is discontinued... Then here we have the Dollmore Basic Gem Doll Dona in normal skin. She's actually a fairy, but every time I tried to make her fairy like it just didn't look good, so finally I went with a biker look and it clicked. The head is minuscule, as are her hands. Putting that tattoo on her was a challenge because of her voluptuous nature.
Either way, that leaves me with only one commission now, a Doll Family-A Fox. So tell your friends about my shop if they're looking to commission someone to paint one of their lovelies! In a week I'll be flying to Austria to visit my family there. I'm taking my SO with me, which'll be the first time they meet her. We're very excited, and a little bit nervous (for various reasons). I'll be gone from July 19th until August 2nd. What that means is that I'll be trying to get what commissions I have on me done and sent back to their owners. I only have 2 more on my right now, which I'm hoping to knock out within the next few days as long as the weather cooperates. I also need to return a friend's MH girls that I've had forever. Anyway, onto the new work I have to show! This week I worked on a Doll Family-A Aurea in white skin. I'm starting to get better at painting white skin dolls. They are tricky because I want to make them lively, but not so much that they don't match their body anymore... It's a conundrum. I think I finally figured out the magic pastel layering combination. He is meant to be an ice/snow elf and belongs to a friend of mine. Her commission is two part, because she got the DF-A event fox as well, so I need to paint him as a lynx pretty much. Either way, I had to keep him pale to make sure he looks frosty. I also have a picture of him with his default face up next to my face up. The default face up was very pretty and well done, but it simply wasn't my friend's character, so she asked me to repaint him for her. She ordered him blank, but MoC accidentally ended up with a face up-ed version. His face up did come off fairly easily at least, only Mystic Kids face ups. I swear MK uses the sealant of gods. I should ask them what they use...
I decided to offer my services to repainting Monster High Dolls. I know I've only painted 3 so far, but I feel I do a good enough job of them to offer them as a commissionable service. I even added a section in my examples for them. Either way, I finally finished a commission for a MH doll for a friend. She has a lot of them so she didn't mind me taking a long time on them. I still need to work on my eyes more for them, this time I only used pastels and watercolor pencils straight up. Normally I paint the eyes, but I'm still experimenting with repainting them. I do have 2 MH dolls myself, one I already painted, and another who I'm now itching to strip and repaint as well. Here are the detail shots of the repaint above: I personally am not a collector of MH dolls, but I sure appreciate the variation from sculpt to sculpt. They all have slightly different features which is really neat. I'm glad I got a tip from an acquaintance on how to easily remove the factory paint job. W&N brush cleaner really works wonders on them and doesn't melt them!
Oh! I'll also be holding a free face up giveaway on my facebook page, so keep your eyes peeled for that post. That's right! I got a lot more done this weekend and a little bit the last one too. I have lots of new face ups to show, including one for myself because 2 more commissions I have on me are more leisurely. I sent out messages to all the commissioners asking for approval or to give my instructions. I'm hoping for approval so I can pack them all up, invoice them, and ship them back out. I feel guilty that it took me so long to work on these, but life exploded and I was sick for a week as well... Either way, they are done now.
With a beautiful 49 degrees outside and everything melting, spring is finally knocking on our door! Too bad it's going to snow again tomorrow. Fortunately it won't stay with how warm it is supposed to be. Either way, I have some new work to show! I finished up the modded DZ April and finally got around to working on the Only Doll RouDie as well. I took one of my liner brushes and trimmed it until it was a 30/0 rather than a 5/0. I'm really happy with how both turned out. I haven't done much with colorful eyeshadow, but I really like how the OnlyDoll turned out. I also really liked the eyelashes I was sent. I wish I could keep the extras, but I'm not, I'm going to send them back. I'll just ask her where they are from. I'm expecting a few more heads soon, so keep an eye out for new work in the next few weeks!
I've been switched to a new work schedule at my job, so now I have Sunday through Tuesday off, but for that I work 4 ten hour shifts a week. I managed to get through one of those on Saturday, so here's to hoping I can get through 4 in a row! I finally finished glossing the heads from the last picture, and got a good chunk painted of the modded DZ April head. I had a lot of fun with these guys, though my eyes were ready to pop out working on the Apple Biki head. It's just so tiny... I also have some WIP shots of the DZ April head. I was originally trying to match her to her default face up, but that quickly proved to be too difficult with just pastels. I valiantly tried for over an hour, before I gave up and just went to town on the head. She is a fantasy character anyway. Basically what I did was mod her eyes to dreaming (first mod I've done like that), I just now need to learn how to use my airbrush so I can colormatch the apoxie sculpt parts to the skin tone better. Oh well, I'll do that next time... The head is no where near done with the paint job.
In other news, the pipe burst in our wall again flooding half the living room this time. We also have a new hole in the wall from that. Hopefully this time when they fix it they won't need to punch another hole in. I was certainly busy yesterday. I painted 3 heads and cleaned up a dreaming eye mod I was working on. From left to right:
Apple Biki Head, Fairyland LTF Baby Ruru, Hujoo Nano Freya, Dollzone April. Not much is left on the painted heads, only gloss and they can all go home. The DZ April head is getting painted hopefully today along with another head I received in the mail yesterday from a commissioner. It's a good thing I bought more MSC recently because I would have been down to just 1 bottle, and that's never enough. I'm safely at 4 bottles now, so I won't need to worry about stocking up again anytime soon... hopefully that is. I'm not yet dead, though I'm pretty sick and have been since Sunday, but I felt better yesterday and the weather was nice so I adventured to MCAD to work on some commissions. I completed 3 heads; a Mystic Kids Christina, Mystic Kids Elisa Elf, and an Asleep Eidolon Peppermint. All of them got natural face ups so it didn't take too long to do all of them, just the whole morning. Also Mystic Kids must use sealant of the gods, their face ups do NOT come off without a fight. It took me an hour to get all the heads clean. I'm still experimenting with the new eyelash technique and the eyebrow detail application since I've only recently started using watercolors rather than applying the watercolor pencils directly. It's a lot less grainy, but I still have a long way to go. I'm happy with it so far though.
These are also the first face ups of 2014! Woo! My shops been open 2 years now. I opened shop in January 2012, so this is exciting. I've come a long way since my first commission in actually 2011, but I didn't start actively taking commissions until January 2012. Since then I've completed over 80 commissioned face ups. That's pretty good if you ask me, I have done some freebies and I'm thinking of holding again a freebie raffle on my Tumblr. More details later. Yesterday I decided to finally blush Winter's hooves. It was a bit of a challenge because they are so stained. When I bought them second hand I didn't know they would be so stained because they were covered in about two layers of acrylic paint. I first scrubbed off the first layer, and then I soaked the hooves in rubbing alcohol for 24 hours. That got the rest of the paint off, but they were still rather stained because of how porous the resin is due to the hand cast nature of them. Either way, I decided to challenge myself with the fantasy blush of them, at least a little bit. I originally wanted the hooves darker than the fur, but I got a bit impatient so I simply painted cracks on them. I experimented with my pastels a bit and managed to even splatter them like acrylic paint. Now once I learn how to paint on eyelashes and eyebrow hairs without the watercolor pencils I feel like I'll level up! And here she is before and after. It's amazing what a difference a face up and wig makes. That is literally the same doll, there you can also see her original hoof blush. It looked nice from a distance, but not so much up close.
Just figured I'd show that I'm not dead and still working on things. Things have been super busy with preparing for the holidays (Thanksgiving) so I haven't been able to go and work on dolls. Also my parents moved so many times on my days off I have to go and clear out my stuff from their old house so they can put it on the market. Man did I throw out a lot of old sketchbooks, some dating back to 6th grade. Oh well, it's not like I need them still in my life, I'm just a sentimental sucker. Anyway, onto the face up! Here we have a Soom FCE Shale in normal skin. He's been an interesting challenge to work on so far since I've never blinged out a doll like this. I actually went ahead and bought gold shimmer powder from PearlEX in regular since I only have the interference series currently. His face up isn't done yet since he still needs some small gems under his eyes but I've had a terrible time trying to find some. I need to check through Michaels and see if I can find anything there. The commissioner has told me that it's okay if I can't find them, but I still want to try. I did redo his face up from the ground up once because the owner did not like the eyebrows, but that's okay, at least it didn't take me terribly long to redo the face up.
Currently I'm still missing his tattoo on his chest and hoof blushing. I'm hoping to get to that this week. I'm very close to being done with this commission set. I'm just waiting on approval again before I either tweak more or finish up by adding eyelashes. I personally like the work at this point. Only problem I foresee are the ears. They were supposed to be lighter on the inside, but as I worked on them they kept getting darker and darker, so I may have to wipe them and start over. I also have another commission that just arrived, but before I can start working on him, I need to repaint Zephyra. She was my very first face up about 2.5 years ago, and now that I've completed (almost) 99 face ups, she's going to be redone as my 100th! It's simply to show myself how much I've improved in 100 face ups. The face up will be the same theme, just updated skill wise. This is her current face up. I still had help on this one with the eyebrows and eyelashes, but her next face up is going to be all me. I even have white eyelashes now which will look gorgeous on her. Oh, she's a Resinsoul Ai in fleshtone. Just thought I'd mention that as well.
Got a few things to work on this week still, but I'm making good progress. I'm currently working on a Fantasy Doll Ono and a Dearmine Dune. Both face ups are nearly done and I still need to finish blushing the Dune's fantasy parts such as tail and ears. Still need to work a bit on both of them. I'm finally figuring out what setting to put my camera on when it's dark out still.
Technically it is still fall here, but the head I got as a replacement for Autumn's decided not to be Autumn anymore, but Winter instead! The head is a Soom MD Beyla. I've been hydriding dolls with Soom parts for a while now, but this is my first Soom head. I was pretty much just playing trying to see what I can do face up wise. I really like how she turned out. She's getting a cute curly light blonde mohair wig. Not like the mohair fur wigs, but more like a natural looking one. She is on a Fairyland LTF body with Daisy Dayes hooves. The hooves are pretty stained, so it's going to take a lot of creativity to make them look awesome again. I'm up for the challenge though! That's all for now.
I did two face ups yesterday, and I've realized that I'm very fast with them. It took me roughly 1.5 hours to paint both head assembly line style. Since they both had the same color scheme and resin tone I just painted them at the same time. I didn't get around to attaching the eyelashes until this morning. The MSD was originally a punk rocker judging from his old face up, but the character has been re-shelled so the owner asked me to put a natural face up on him. I did a different style of freckles on the YoSD, I was asked to make them more animatic rather than how I normally do them. I also hope I put the eyes into the correct heads. It's difficult when they both have the same size eyes...
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Iza's Face UpsWelcome to the blog area of my site. Here you get to see my progress shots and the such of what I work on. Also I post news here. Enjoy! To Do List:
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