cian's dolls: FACEUP LOG: Interlude | Parker's (Kanadoll Adrian) faceup process

Since I've been sharing the progress of Parker, my Kanadoll Adrian, on Instagram, I decided to compile everything here for easy reference. It's always been interesting for me to know how other owners do their faceups, and maybe you'll find my faceup process interesting to read or useful for your own faceup progress. :)

/ / / / / P R E _ F A C E U P / / / / /

Inspiration/reference for this faceup: here on Pinterest.

Before even doing the faceup, I like to collate a bunch of inspiration photos and reference photos.

Inspiration photos are usually for overall mood of the doll, and their overall colour schemes to match the hair or eye colour I want. My tendency nowadays is to use kpop idols' makeup for inspiration because they have really pretty makeup and there's more to choose from than if I use purely doll photos for reference.

Reference photos are photos of actual doll faceups. I use this for referring to other artists' technique, like how they draw brows, eyelashes, how they blush or use colours etc. I also collect a bunch of different faceups on the actual sculpt I'm working on, to see what type of brows or shading I like or don't like on the doll. Basically it saves me time from having to experiment with multiple faceups to find what I like and would work on the sculpt! It's like doing research lol.

I start with a board and sometimes add to them along the way as I do the faceup.

/ / / / / F A C E U P / / / / /

My process usually looks like this:

* MSC x 3 layers (base protection)
* Pastel work (until the MSC is saturated and pastels don't stick well)
* MSC x 1 layer
* Pastel work (99% done for pastel work already)

* MSC x 1 layer (to seal before starting line work)

* Line work (and minor pastel work after lines are done if needed)

* MSC x 3 layers (to seal overall faceup)

* Gloss x 2 layers

I've seen artists do pastel and line work together but I almost always do the line work last. It's partly because I use watercolour paint instead of acrylic paint, and doing pastels after lines mean the pastels stick to the line work and it gets very dark in the places where I've drawn lines. So I try to avoid pastel work once I start drawing lines. I think this mostly depends on what you're comfortable with and what materials you have. For me, 2 layers of pastel work is enough to get the saturation I want because I'm using very pigmented pastels (Schmincke). But if I was using pastels with more filler (e.g. Rembrandt), then I would probably need more layers.

Anyway, here's photos from the faceup process.

(Side note: It's the first time I tried tracking the time spent working directly on the faceup, and I'm not sure if this is my normal amount of time or not, since I usually count the whole duration from start to end, which includes lull time and real life, meaning that that could be anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months or longer.)

[ 01 h 00 min ]

I wanted a dark eyeshadow on him, so I start with laying a base with first a yellow oxide layer, then a vermilion layer. I've found that layering multiple colours turn out better when you want a darker look.

He also has faint eyebrows here, because I like to get the shape of the brows early since I need some erasing to get the hang of it and it's easier to do erasing bits of the faceup on a blank head than when I've already done blushing.

[ 02 h 30 min ]

At this point I was half-regretting using an old can of MSC for his base MSC layers because the pastels weren't sticking that well. I did a reddish brown over the previous colours, then a vandyke brown. It's quite a bit of pastels in the eye area and the MSC was getting saturated so I stopped and left the head thinking I'll blend later.

[ 03 h 30 min ]

While blending, I ended up adding more brown, and hey, it sticks! That's the thing I've noticed - that somehow if you leave the head for a while and come back, it's like the MSC can suddenly take more pastels. I'm not sure why or how this works, but it... does. Also did more blushing overall and on his lips. There's blue on the under eye area as well but my phone camera doesn't pick it up much.

[ 04 h 15 min ]

More blushing, more blue, and then I drew the eyebrows thicker. At this point the MSC was really saturated and I had to spray a new MSC layer to continue doing pastel work.

[ 05 h 15 min ]

Two photos taken at the same stage, the top one is from my phone, the bottom one from my DSLR. You can see the phone camera doesn't do the colours justice but anyway, it's a good quick way to keep track of my progress.

Here, I added some walnut brown (a greyyish brown) and black pastels to the eye area to darken them. Think of it like eyeliner done in eyeshadow powder. I also added some walnut brown and rose madder (sort of burgundy) to the lips.

[ 06 h 00 min ]

Worked mostly on the lips, adding rose madder to darken. Minor adding of colour on the eye area and blushing. After this was another layer of MSC to prepare for the line work to come.

[ 07 h 30 min ]

Drew eyelashes, eyeliner and eyelid lines with varying mixtures of brown and black. A tip I read is to never use black paint as it is, which I find to be very helpful. Black + brown can make a natural black, while black + purple gives a more inky black. I opted for black and brown here.

Somehow, the eyelashes turned out different styles on each side despite my best effort, and the eyelid line is wonky because it follows the carved resin which wasn't perfectly symmetrical. At this point I was a bit sad because it seems like my line work was screwing things up. BUT! I would try to fix this later, and in hindsight, while my lines here at this stage weren't great, they were not un-fixable or as bad as I thought. So if you're like me and have a tendency to feel discouraged by hiccups in the process, I urge you to put that judgement on hold, and just continue first. Sometimes I'm just being too critical on a work-in-progress and things actually work out better as it goes on.

[ 08 h 45 min ]

Drew in the lip seam line and lip corners with a crimson mixed with brown. Also tried to fix his eyelashes to make it more balanced (made his right eyelashes longer in parts). It's fixable, like I said, even though I was pretty down about it before. I also drew in eyebrow lines and more eyelid lines.

[ 09 h 15 min ]

Lip lines. Gradation done with very fine and faint lip lines (more crimson and brown mixed in varying amounts for different levels of darkness). I've never been a fan of lip lines on dolls, but I think it was because I couldn't do fine strokes last time. With very fine lines, I'm starting to like the effect it can achieve!

[ 09 h 45 min ]

Still working on lip lines. I added a almost more brown (rather than crimson) shade in the centre where the lines are the most obvious. Also darkened eyelid crease lines.

[ 10 h 30 min ]

Added skin texture/freckles and moles with a very watered down sandy brown and crimson mix. I think I always use at least 2 colours for any sort of line work, and just mix them differently depending on how dark/light I want that area to be. It gives the line work more depth than if you just add water to control darkness, or if you add straight up black or white to do this. I suppose if you use acrylic, the water bit of mixing doesn't apply but the rest should be the same.

[ 11 h 00 min ]

For gloss, he ended up with 4 layers of it, on the lips and eyeliner/eye rim. I usually do about 2-3 layers just because the gloss I use -- Winsor & Newton (pictured) -- takes a few layers to get the shine I want. And also because gloss eats up a bit of the MSC so once a layer of gloss is on, I can't try to fix it or add more in that session, otherwise it would shift the paint and pastel underneath. So I have to wait till the next round of glossing to fix it.

On a related note, I do also have Tamiya X-22, which is what more people use, but not every doll needs super glossy lips and eyes! It's a personal preference but I use my Winsor & Newton gloss more. I prefer the buildability of this gloss over the super high shine of the Tamiya X-22.

Anyway, with the gloss added, Parker's faceup is officially done!

I don't usually glue applied eyelashes on my dolls, although I might try it for Parker. But in the meantime, please enjoy the photos of his finished faceup :D