Painting getting better :-)

This is my newest girl. I am quite pleased with the result, I think it came out better than the previous dolls. And the best thing is that I painted her with my Liquitex acrylics, which was far more easier than with my previous acrylics.

So I don't know whether my painting skills are improving or is it the good-quality paint... Maybe both :-).

The good thing is that I seem to have less trouble with painting eyelashes. I thought I would never manage to do them right. However, I like the way her eyelashes came out. It is a pity that my camera is not able to capture such details too well :-(     

A pleasant surprise ♥

Yesterday I finally received the Liquitex acrylics I had ordered from UK two weeks ago. Unfortunately, all the stuff I need to paint, is not too accessible in this country, I must look for it all over the world... Thus, I also had to order sealer and brushes from Japan. Yeah, extra thin, special brushes! 

Before I started to paint, I had thought it would be easy: just go to a local art supply shop, buy a thin brush, some acrylics and... let's begin! Well, it wasn't so...

I bought some acrylics - a brand that I had always considered to be a good one. And a brush of size 0. Unfortunately, I realized that those acrylics were not too good and my brush was far from being thin. And these were the basic mistakes I made at the beginning.

So, in the end, I decided to get Liquitex, a brand recommended by every doll artist.

Now, after having tested the Liquitex, I am very pleased. There are some big differences I have noticed:

• my old acrylics dry very fast, so I always had to use retarder; with Liquitex I don't have to use it at all
• Liquitex doesn't stick to the brush, my acrylics did that, then I had to clean the brush with acetone (I even destroyed a few brushes this way :-( )
• those old acrylics are kinda grainy, so it is difficult to paint the smallest details, Liquitex are nice and smooth 

So I guess it was worth it. Tomorrow I am planning to paint my goth girl :-)

Gothic dress

I've been working on this gothic outfit also. It is not quite finished. This unnamed doll needs a face-up too. 

Another one

This is Kazumi. A Japanese wannabe :-). I also made the romantic top she is wearing. 

However, there is this shitty quality of the photo again... :-( This was taken without flash.)  

Next Obitsu...still work in progress

This was my next face-up. I made her this outfit and jewelry too. I named her Camelia.

But she looks better in reality. It is weird.

I still have to figure out how to get better photos. I have always considered my camera to be a high-quality one, however, I don't like the way these photos came out. I don't seem to find the problem. Is it the flash?

Rise of the artist (LOL)

Well, I would like to become a good doll-artist one day :-) And there is always a beginning...

I was very happy when I received my first original Obitsu doll from Japan. But this was not all. I needed some other things before I could start painting the face. First of all, I needed special acrylic colours. Special brushes as well, varnish and sealer. It is not so simple as it seems and I had to learn everything from the beginning. And I had to look for these materials all over the world. I also bought another Obitsu-style head on Ebay. It is some Chinese imitation (that I didn't know at the moment). But it was good to practice on.

My very first attempt came out... TERRIBLE. So was the second. I took photos but I am ashamed to post them here. Then another 3 or 4 attempts followed. I cleaned the head and painted it over and over... 

And then I finally tried to paint the original Obitsu head. And this is the result:

I guess it's quite good :) It was some 5th or 6th attempt.

Obitsu overview

Obitsu is a nice and flexible anime-style realistic Japanese doll. You can buy it blank from the factory. You can choose from a few body and head types as well as a few sizes. There are males and females. The largest doll is 60 cm tall, the smallest 21 cm.

It has no clothes, no eyes and mouth painted. The head comes with the hair rooted or bald - in this case you can use a wig. It also comes with the face ready to paint the eyes on or it may have eye openings - in which case you can get and insert eyeballs.

You can choose from a great variety of body parts and accessories.

At the beginning, my boyfriend thought it was a little morbid, but now he likes it too :-). 

Anyway, I prefer the 27 cm body, I don't know why, but I don't quite like the bigger ones. 

Introduction

...So what's all this doll stuff?

Have you ever heard of customizing dolls? Well, it means modifying a doll according to your immagination. You can customize a doll in many ways: you can simply sew clothes and dress her as you like. You can go even further: when you don't like the ugly factory painting, you can remove the original face painting and paint the face yourself. You will get a so-called custom doll or one of a kind doll (OOAK).

You can find a great variety of custom dolls: Barbie, Tonner, Obitsu, Momoko, Volks (these are the ones I know, so far) and others. There are people who don't like the way dolls come out from factory, so they customize them.

I chose Obitsu (for now).

The beginning

A couple of months ago, by chance, I came across the website of a doll painter.  I was completely thrilled and I started to dig more about this craft. As I was searching, I discovered wonderful things. Something like this hadn't crossed my mind before. Who would have said that Barbie is not only for children, who would have thought that there are so many things which could be done? I didn't know.

Until that day. And that was the day when I felt I found the purpose of my life... :-)

Once upon a time...

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who loved fairytales and playing with dolls. She would never get tired of playing, and especially of creating clothes for her dolls. As the time passed, she became more and more skilled in this craft. Then she proudly started to show her creations to others.

But people only laughed at the little girl, (who wasn't so little anymore), they said it was sick. She started to believe them and she became very sad... In the end she got rid of all her dolls and everything related. She tried to become a "normal" human being. 

Many years have passed since she threw away everything and she almost forgot what it is like to dream. Until one day...