Monday, May 26, 2008

BJD Finn Faceup

OKAY. So don't be scared by the freaky looking doll face with no eyes, please. XD This is a Featherfall "Finn" head, which was designed by my friend Apis and sculpted by an artist and made into an actual doll. My friend Kat won this head from a doll clothing design contest Apis held awhile back, and she generously gave it to me so I could use it to practice faceups.

Doing this kind of art is something I think I'd have fun with, it's basically like being a makeup artist but for cool, expensive, personalized dolls that people own. XD It's a fun hobby and I hope to get my own doll someday. They are, however, around $800 bucks looking at just the basics of a body, head, and maybe a faceup, eyes, and some hair. Custom faceups done by artists generally go for pretty expensive, like around $50 and upwards because they're so detailed, time intensive and supplies consuming.

So I'm thinking if I could possibly get good at this and maybe get some good supplies, like spray, gloss, pastels and what have you (or even an airbrusher in the future) I could make quite a hunk of change doing faceup commissions for people. And to invest in the BJD economy in an even better way, I'll purchase my very own doll one day using the money I make! (Read: Splurge and spend any precious money I may acquire while in school and spend it on a doll instead of necessities such as food.)

So that's why I want to start doing it, aside from the fact that it's fun. Anywho, I just tried doing my first faceup last night at Claire's, so onto the results:










I think for the most part, I did pretty good for my first try. I went for something simplistic so I could learn the basics without diving into anything too complicated right away. There are a lot of obvious screw ups, and I'm gonna be completely honest, after about 4 hours I started to get lazy and I wasn't putting as much effort into steadying my hand as I should have been. Doing the stuff like the eyebrows with a thin brush is actually not that difficult, you just have to know how much paint to have on the brush, and knowing how to paint with acrylic beforehand definitely helps with this.

The lips are a bit lopsided, which is something I sort of knew was happening as I was painting but chose to ignore anyway, lol. There are also a couple of spots on his right cheek where the MSC got dented while drying, and a few paint blobs that I was too lazy to try and clean off. It's easy to get rid of pastel, but not so easy to get rid of acrylic, especially after it's dried and you already have like 8 layers of MSC down and don't wanna ruin the entire thing. I figured that I would just live with the little mistakes in favour of not having to start from square one.

That being said, the mistakes I made were mostly little. I didn't do any huge "OMFG SHIT" paint puddles in his tear duct or anything. I just worked slowly and built up the colours and layers. So that's encouraging. I think if I sit down at a desk where I can rest my hand and take proper breaks every hour or so I could do a really decent job, as opposed to sitting on Claire's couch, holding it with one hand and watching Veronica Mars for like 8 hours straight.

I think the main things that need work are:

- The eyebrow hairs are pretty smooth and balanced in shape for the most part, but I did screw up on a couple strokes. I need to learn how to fix them without taking off any of the MSC if that's even at all possible, or I might remedy this by using watercolour next time instead of acrylic.

- The lips are lopsided, and the crease could be more steady, same with the lip lines. ALSO, they do not have any gloss, which they should. I didn't get a chance to experiment with that, I wanted to see how thinning out the gloss would work, but alas Claire didn't have any as she lent it to her friend.

-The pastel is chunky/blotchy. It doesn't look so bad in these pictures, but you can tell when you look at it in real life. I think I got it pretty smooth for the most part, but I'm still unhappy with the unevenness, and I think I can blame this mostly, again, on the too-many-layers thing. It ended up with uneven distribution and etc. etc. I also thing the blushing is too dark around the sides of the face, chin and nose, especially for a head with such a pale resin colour.

The biggest mistake I would say is that I overworked it. Instead of doing everything in one layer, if I messed something up, instead of trying to go back and fix it I just kept mixing paint and going over it til it looked how I wanted, which gave it a very "painted on" look and not very natural at all. The biggest trick I think is that less is more and you basically have to get it right in one or two layers or it will look too caked. So that's something I'll try for next time-- as little number of layers as possible, and one chance to make it look the way you want (before you erase, haha.)

I also didn't get to try putting on eyelashes, but that's something I'm sure I'll get to try eventually.

So, that leaves us with this: Any suggestions on what I should aim for with my next faceup? Any ideas for a faceup that is unique, challenging, or a new technique so I can vary my style from what I'd normally do?

PS. I did also post a thread over at Den of Angels so for those of you who are also on the forum, if you'd like to provide your feedback there instead, it might help me out a bit more to discuss it sort of within the community. :D

Thread@DoA

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Disneyland Doodles.

I just got back from Disneyland a few days ago, and while I was there, I felt like drawing the whole time from being bombarded with so many cartoons and art. It was pretty cool, kind of inspirational or something, so here's some doodles I did while I was there.


Me and Justine, sitting at a restaurant downstairs in Critter Country. This is actually what we were doing at the time of the drawing, it's an accurate life portrait.


Ahh, Ariel. One of my favourite Disney characters, and my long lost twin or something.


Me and Justine sitting in the hotel lobby, waiting for our shuttle to arrive to take us to the airport. Again with the accurate life portrait. And that face behind Justine's head is Buzz Lightyear, in case you were wondering. Figure out what's sitting in my bag next to me, and you get a present.


And here's an emoman that I drew for Justine, because she loves them so much. I can't take credit for the ingenious quote in the thought bubble though, Justine came up with that one. Sorry if it's offensive. Because, you know, the guitar looks really shitty and some hardcore guitar fans might get pissed that I drew such a shitty one. *ahem*

Friday, May 9, 2008

Artses for peoples. (and tegaki randomness)

Okay, this first one is a doodle of Oberon's Throne which will be used somewhere in an upcoming play that someone I know is writing. I'll probably also be painting/CGing the main poster for the play when it comes out, so I'll post that when it's done too.


This is to make up for the fact that I'll be in Disneyland on the 16th, missing my friend's birthday party which I really wanted to go to. :< THIS IS FOR YOU, VANESSA. haha. I know you guys will have fun without me. XD


edit: K later on in the day I got bored and doodled this on my tegaki. I was inspired by my sister, who decided to do my hair, and it ended up crazy and curly and weird and me with a disgruntled look on my face. My sister's blonde and I have long red hair, so for some reason it immediately reminded me of Nill and Badou from the manga Dogs, and this is what I ended up picturing, to my amusement.


I got really lazy and it's not as finished as I wanted it to be. But I went kind of crazy and experimental with the colours, and I like how it turned out. Badou doesn't really look like himself at all. XD;;