I'm back from my trip overseas to see my family and came home with treats, many experiences, and an awkward sunburn along my neck and chest from walking without sunscreen in Budapest.
My SO and I visited Austria, Hungary, and Serbia. She didn't like Serbia much (the amenities weren't the greatest, i.e.: the outhouse for a bathroom), but she loved everything else. It was her first trip to Europe and across the ocean. Her favorite part was all the food. It is nice to be back home though and in our own bed. So much nicer than a pull out couch for 2 weeks. It was comfortable, but still it's good to be home. The kitties missed us a lot and greeted us with a chorus. Either way, that means I'm open for commissions again. I still have a few left over that I'll hammer out this next week.
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It is official, I'm going on my first vacation today in almost 2 years to see my family in Vienna, Austria. I'm taking my fiancee with me, and she's never flown international or really left the country before. So she's excited as am I. I have a couple of things I need to work on, but they are on hold until I return on August 2nd. I extra bought a new camera for this (just a small Nikon CoolPix point and shoot) so we can take lots of pictures. I may or may not post them to Flickr, and perhaps the best here. One last picture of all of our dolls as we bid them farewell for two weeks. Two dolls aren't in the picture because they are floating heads. One has a body on order and the other does not.
Our two kitties are really confused as to why we've both got suitcases. We have some friends taking care of them in our absence. Bye everyone! Since I reside in the USA, I figured I should wish all of my US resident followers a happy independence day! I've been in the US almost 14 years now (August is my US anniversary). My plans for today are doing some cleaning, perhaps another face up, and then going to my best friend's house to celebrate 4th of July like I have for the past several years. Either way, last night I redid my Soom FCE Chrom's face up because he got a new wig. His old one was driving me bonkers, and I was never fully satisfied with his face up either. So now he got the spa treatment. I have a couple more things to paint now, so those will be next! I'm really happy with his ear shading and around the eyes detailing. Last time I did his face up I had to use my old method (drawing straight with WC pencils onto the head) because he kept fighting me. This time I was able to paint the watercolors like I like to do now. His eyebrows are a lot softer and real looking in my opinion, along with his eye lashes. Here's also a picture of his new wig taken early this morning. Those who aren't in the USA, have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend!
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. Since I have no new work to show, I wanted to show you my current doll family that I also share space with my fiancee's dolls. As you can see the dolls have switched out and multiplied a lot since I last posted a family picture. Most of the dolls in this picture are mine, except for 5 which belong to my fiancee. Pretty much all of them feature my handiwork, except for the Dollzone April who all I did with was add freckles to her default face up. I have one doll on the way who I'm paying off in about two months, and my fiancee has a floating head in need of a body. This is the compilation of their sculpts, at least for my collection. I have a lot of dolls. Good thing I love them all!
So far this week I've only done redos rather than brand new face ups. I do still have two commissions on me, which I will tackle today. Since I've had this boy for sale since January about with no reasonable offers on him, I decided to redo his face up since the old one was way too brown. I'm hoping this will increase his chances of being sold... The other face up I did yesterday was on my partner's Soom SO Adamelli Centaur girl. I just did a face up on her a week ago, but it reminded her too much of her Soom MD Shale, so I redid it. The first face up on her looked plain, but those were the directions I was given. The second time I was told to give her freckles and given some reference photos for what she wanted after realizing she looked too much like her other doll. Now to get back to the Impldoll Aldrich again. I was still using my old method with him where I would draw on the eyelashes and eyebrow hairs with the pencil rather than paint them. I need to invest in more watercolors so that I can expand my palette. Either way, he looks a lot better this way. I almost want to keep him, but I don't know who he is or who he could be since the character he shelled has been taken by my Soom FC Chrom.
Oh well, hopefully he'll sell at some point. I've already listed him way below retail price for new and blank. And now for some detail shots. My tan DZ Stramonium is finally done aesthetic wise, I did the scar on her chest and a partial body blush on her torso. I just can't get over how pretty this doll is. Once I clean up my poor desk again, I will take some good documentation pictures of her body blush and scar mod. For now this will have to do. I really love how the scar turned out, I just wish doing scars took less time (gotta wait for the glue to dry), but oh well. The end result of patience is usually best.
Also I now have most of my commissions in hand, with one more arriving probably today or Monday and then I'll be painting faces like a maniac. I currently have 3 heads to paint, with 1 more arriving. I also finally finished blushing the ears for my penpal, so once I document those I'll be sending them out to her. Someone asked me on a forum to take WIP shots while working on a face up. With Christmas just having been I got a new doll from my dad as a gift, a DZ Stramonium in tan. She is so pretty. I didn't care for the face up she came with so I did my own as soon as possible while taking pictures. The head is clean and sealed and the scar is applied with white (PVA) glue. It takes forever for the glue to dry, so if you're going to do scars, be prepared to wait up to an hour before you can start blushing. The glue dries clear. I always start with eyebrows for two reasons; one, that's how I was taught, and two, it sets the mood for the whole face up. I also blushed the scar a bit to match it to the tan resin. Now to seal again. Blushing applied here and there to bring color and life to the face. I use peach tones and some muted mauve colors to bring depth to the features. After this I seal again to make sure I can detail. Details! Here I flushed out the lips fully, added eyelashes and defined the eyebrows. At this point I'm done with the painting part so now to seal again twice. The final step is to gloss and applying eyelashes. At this point the face up is done. All that's left is to wait for the glue to dry on the eyelashes.
And that concludes my face up process. As you see it really isn't that involved. I will document this face up soon properly to add to my examples. 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.
I did it! I got to my 100th face up. You guys have no idea how excited this has me since I've been doing this since about August 2011, though I only started taking commissions for reals in 2012. Here's the before and after shot as well. I did have help on her eyebrows and eyelashes when I worked on her the first time. Still really happy with my improvement. I'm also currently working on another commission, a Soom FCE Shale. He's turning out lovely so far, but finding stones the right size for his face has proven to be very difficult. Oh well, I'll figure something out.
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.
Well, looks like my plate is pretty empty again. All I have now to work on is personal projects that I always somehow put off. Two face ups I need to redo on my dolls, but I need the process documented for my new face up book. Anyway, if you have a head laying around in need of a new face, don't hesitate to message me! I'll be raising my prices by $5 in October since it's been a good 6 months since my last price raise. So if you want a head painted at my current prices, now is the time! In other news, my floating DZ Miss Kitty head finally got her new DC kid body. Seeing her put together like this makes it hard to believe she was ever a YoSD. I do have to do some modding on her neck hole so that her head will sit better. DC bodies are interesting to dress because her torso fits into YoSD clothes while her hips are better suited
I decided to share my doll family once again since the weather's been awful for face up-ing. I did clean up the Impldoll Xavier in my care, so he's ready to be made all pretty and stuff. Anyway, this is my current doll set up: Three of the dolls belong to my partner, but since we live together they get to sit with the others. I currently have 10 dolls and 1 floating head. The head has a new body on order and she's going to look amazing! I've also realized that half of my dolls are hybrids.
In the picture we have: Back row: Lily (DZ Miss Kitty Head in the cage), Zephyra (RS Ai/DF-A/Soom Beryl hybrid), Val (DZ Chen), and Eva (DZ April who belongs to my partner). Middle Row: Ursa (DZ Shoyo), Cel (Soom Shale who belongs to my partner), and Elyra (FL MNF Ryeon). Front Row: Autumn (AoD AiAi/FL LTF hybrid), Liam (Impldoll Aldrich/Soom Chrom Hybrid), Prem (FL LTF Dark Elf Soo/Daisy Dayes hybrid who belongs to my partner), Rose (modded DZ Sheep/Daisy Dayes hybrid), Diuris (FL LTF Chiwoo Elf Girl) and Talulah (DZ Chinese Dragon Girl/DZ Miss Kitty Hybrid). Within the next week my partner is receiving another doll, a DZ Gretta with Una ears/ DC Y-03 hybrid. I just bought a wig for her so that should arrive within the week too. I can't wait to work on her as well. Either way, as you can see I have a lot of dolls, and I like showing them off in a pyramid structure. I once tried a different set up, but it looked horrible so I quickly changed it back to this one. Almost all the dolls in this picture have face ups by me, only Eva and Talulah don't. Though Talulah will soon get wiped and have a new face up painted on her. There we go, back in the groove! This time we have a Bobobie Isabella in Fleshtone. I love doing freckles, so much. And Bobobie's look a lot better with custom face ups than their defaults. They look so lifeless in the grey.
Happy new year everyone! I hope everyone had a good slide into 2013. Mine was lovely, and calm. It took a while to reach people to wish them a happy new year since the phone networks always collapse at midnight on new year's day.
2012 was an interesting and growing year. I'm kind of glad it's over Either way, here's to having an awesome new year! Now for a list of my resolutions: 1. Get in shape. 2. Stop buying new dolls and complete the ones I have. 3. Get to 100 completed face ups (I'm at 48)! 4. Not buy my two floaters their bodies until summer. I think those are some good doll related resolutions (except for 1). At 10 full dolls and two floaters I'm running out of room on the dresser. And my partner has 6 dolls, though she's selling 2, so there's not much room on my dresser for any new additions. Good thing too. Sadly one of my floaters is a 70cm head, so he'll be big, luckily the other is a YoSD. Do you guys have any resolutions? |
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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