first use of my airbrush

It's been over a year since I got it, but the thing is damned intimidating. And I must say that I'm a bit glad I was intimidated. If I'd just gone in and tried to use it without waiting until I was in a calm and patient mood, I probably would've chucked it off the balcony. There was a very specific consistency I had to get paint to in order for it to work, and figuring out which way to pull the lever and how much pressure to apply to get anything to happen was a bit of a pain initially.

Either nothing would come out or everything would come out at once. And then once I was comfortable enough using it on scrap paper and an old chair, I tried it on Kael's head and it just sent the paint radiating out in spindly patterns every which way. It took me a while to realize that I had to hold it pretty far back to avoid that.

I don't yet feel comfortable enough with it to attempt a full face up, but I did manage to blush my mods to Kael's face to match the rest of his head, so now he does not have extremely visible white marks around his mouth! And that's what matters.

If you look really closely you can still see where they are, but it's a vast improvement over being able to see them from across the room!

After this was done I gave him a new face up. This time I didn't have model viewer up so I could stare at the in-game model for Kael. I know this sculpt can pull off Kael, so I didn't really feel obligated to stick to it exactly.

I think I might have gone a bit too far in the 'subtle' direction again. Doesn't show up very well in photos. Oh well. This is what practice was invented for.

 

 In my room.

 Natural lighting.

And for funsies heavily photoshopped shot.

natural light photos and attempts at eyelash application

So I promised some natural lighting photos of Orkas' face. (I'm sure you all were holding me to that and awaiting them anxiously too).

Well it's rather cloudy out and I had to actually go outside on the porch for these because not enough light wanted to come in through the window. So this means the photos aren't from a consistent angle because I was trying to hold a doll and hold the camera.

In other words, these are ridiculously bad, un-artistic photos.

But at least now we can actually see that Orkas has eyebrows and isn't just completely blank. I really fail at this whole 'natural' thing. Not my forte. I much prefer dark and dramatic, or at least like gaunt and worn out.

While I was out there I decided to get pictures of another sort of project I'm trying to work on. My first attempt at applying eyelashes. I never give them to my guys because I have a near-impossible time making them look like men when they have eyelashes. I realize that real men pull this off all the time, but real mean look a bit more rugged than dolls most of the time. There are a couple of my dudes who I have considered giving eyelashes to (Avelarion mostly) but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

Anna was my test subject. She's my only other girl aside from Elaria who is not currently being sold and Elaria already has lashes. She came with them.

Anyway... this is not my forte. I spent ages trying to get them in last night, let the glue dry overnight, tried to put eyes in and the eyelashes immediately started to fall out. So I looked up tutorials and they pretty much did exactly what I did so that was no help. So I just kind of put more layers of glue over them and on the inside and am hoping that will help them stay. If not I think I'll just swear off the use of eyelashes forever...

These are actually meant to go on people so they're obscenely long on Anna. But I didn't want to go to the trouble of ordering doll-size eyelashes for an experimental procedure that might not turn out okay.

Three coats of glue later, they still won't stay put.  I officially hate doll eyelashes. And these photos may very well be the last time anyone hears from these.

face up practice: Orkas (Elfdoll K)

I've had Orkas (right) in the same blonde wig since I got him. It was always intended to be a temporary, but somehow over four years later it was still in use. I got so used to it that I almost forgot Orkas wasn't actually blonde.

But a while back in my quest for the right wig for Loren, I acquired an orange-ish wig that I wasn't doing anything with. Orkas' hair is supposed to be in the light orange-ish range, so today I decided to give that to him and style it appropriately.

After that it occurred to me that I haven't re-done his face up in ages and since I'm trying to get around to re-doing everybody eventually I figured I would do him. I experimented with a more subdued, natural look and while I'm relatively okay with the results, it is hard to photograph in this lighting. I'll probably try to get natural lighting photos tomorrow.

Orkas with new face up and wig:

sculpted eyebrows and other mods

When Impldoll released Triton I was pretty excited because I've been trying to find a doll for a minor character of mine who is a water dragon. I originally tried getting a Vega Last Song for him but it didn't work out.

Basically, the representation isn't supposed to be 100% accurate to the character, but I want something that is similar and gets across the right feel. Technically Aeisthran is blue too but I didn't realize Impl would do blue if asked so I just went for grey because I've always wanted a grey skin doll anyway.

But anyway, I didn't do much with him for ages, but then a couple days ago I decided I wanted to make his eyes smaller and sculpt him eyebrows. He has a gill-beard so it seemed weird that he'd have hair eyebrows.

I tried them first in Premo but they fell off during cooking. Then I tried to cast those in resin so I could just glue them on his face, but my mold release didn't work and the silicon just stuck to itself and ate them. So I got some epoxy putty and just used that. Probably should have done that in the first place but it was late and I didn't want to wait until the next day to try them.

I threw on some paint and such so the white eyebrows wouldn't be so jarring. Everything's pretty messy (there was an experiment with a sort of drippy/watery texture going on with the upper half of the head) but I wanted there to at least be something before I took pictures.

I don't know what sort of wig I want for him. I considered just leaving him bald but if I go that route I'll probably mod like weird tentacles or something onto his head to make his head look less naked. Right now he's in a wig I made a while back because he's supposed to have white or grey hair and this is my only spare white wig.

structural modification

I had planned to put off actually modding Scileraen until tomorrow during the day. But then I wasn't particularly tired and was in such a good mood I decided to just go for it! To hell with caution!

Since the porch light would disturb Selly, I gathered my wood carving tools from my printmaking class, got one of my functional respirators, and grabbed my packets of sandpaper. Then I locked myself in the bathroom with a bucket of water so that I could keep resin dust under control.

I wrapped my left hand in an oven mitt and a towel because whenever I use carving tools I inevitably cut my hands pretty badly. Luckily, this time things went smoothly and the process was injury-free!

I drew lines for where I wanted the hollows of the cheeks to be and really roughly carved in the basic shape. Then I pulled out my 300 grit sandpaper and sanded until the surface was relatively smooth. After going up to about 1500 grit it was back to being the same color as the surrounding un-modded resin.

While looking at the jagged shapes my carving tools make, I got the idea to give Scileraen his forehead scars because the jaggedness reminded me of the weird crinkles scars get. So I gouged up his forehead and it's not pretty but it is accurate to his character. (kind of odd that I feel that way seeing as normally I find scars appealing.)

I didn't want to wipe the face up I just did earlier today so I just modded without wiping it and then sealed over it after and just touched up the modded areas. I can sort of see the line between the two parts, but it's not very obvious. Not near as bad as when I tried to mod my realskin Akando without wiping his face... that was pretty terrible looking XD

Anyway, here are some pictures where you can (hopefully) see the mod work that has been done:

Right side of the face.

Left side of the face.

And fairly straight on.

They're not perfectly even, but I'm pretty happy with it.! Also, the wig is dry now (it doesn't look it, but it is.) I used hair glue on the ends to bring them to points but the rest is just the way they naturally stay after my boiling water treatment. I am also pleased with this! I'm sure most people wouldn't find this look particularly appealing but I had a really specific look in mind and a fur wig, while easily styled this way, would have made his hair look too soft. And it's not supposed to be soft.

wig modding and more faceups

Scileraen is one of my bjds that I really struggle to properly bond with. I think he has a lot of potential and when I do take the time to try to make him work I feel really attached, but it's one of those cases where I got a mold because I saw potential in it, but what I wanted required a lot of modding. And I'm impatient when I first get a new doll and often just want to enjoy looking at them rather than spend ages sanding them.

So I did some quick mods on him but then left things alone aside from that. I'm hoping to get some more serious stuff done sometime this week, but for now I re-did his face and wig (which is always a huge pain). This time I decided that rather than attempt to assault it with hair glue I would try styling it more permanently by arranging strands and pouring boiling water over them so that they'd stay in that position better.

Hair is still drying, so we'll see how it works out for real later. It has potential to work for what I want though.

face ups and photo spam

 Last night I did face ups for two of Selly's dudes: Fug, a Luts Abadon, and her as-yet-unnamed(?) Migidoll Miho. I'm always a little nervous doing face ups for other people because I'm not sure if I'll do them right for the character.

That's not to say that I don't enjoy it. I just worry more. And try to get it right on the first go. Which usually makes me a bit unhappy with the end result.

Here is Fug:

And here is Miho:

I had to wait until today because last night the room's lighting was eating the face ups. Alas, I don't really like how Fug's looks in natural lighting either... But it was my first attempt at incorporating acrylic paints into a face up in like... years. And I should really start trying to do that more but I have a really unsteady hand so that's always intimidating.

The good lighting inspired me to take a few more pictures of some of my own dudes though, so be warned... a bit of picspam ahead.

I started out with Lyric, whose hair I trimmed some last night. I'm not sure yet if I like it, but I find Lyric 90 kinds of adorable regardless.

Then I took a couple of Matthew, but I still don't feel like his head photographs properly. I'm quite keen on it in person but it looks different in photos somehow. Still, these two weren't terrible so they'll have to do.

Doppelganger never gets photo love. A lot of that being because he's not cooperative. I do try, but it seldom works out. Perhaps it's the more stylized head and the fact that I mostly work with semi-realistic ones these days? I don't know. But I really love this head regardless.

Also wanted to get some shots of Elaria, because all of hers are taken in terrible lighting. (Though one might argue that terrible lighting trumps a backdrop of a Spiderman blanket... I don't know if that person would win that argument but they might at least make a point)

Then it was Defliel (left) and Ezsphrein (right)'s turn for pictures. I got a close up of Defliel because he doesn't get much photo love either. Ezsphrein, however,  has gotten a fair bit of coverage throughout his time with me, including being the first to get a proper box opening photoshoot.

Avelarion/Al'ar is harder to photograph at close range, due to his plethora of crazy feathers and appendages.

And lastly, I decided to get a couple shots of Nazoe. He's the odd one out in my collection, with his MSD head that is larger than most of my SD heads. He's on a modified Shinydoll body so he's somewhere between MSD and SD size. Most of the time if someone doesn't fit in they get re-shelled, but Dollstown Seola was one of the first molds I ever fell in love with and I find Nazoe far too cute as is. So unless Dollstown makes a tiny Seola that I can turn into an MSD that's in scale with everyone else, I'm pretty much just going to leave him this way.

painting doll nails

Despite the fact that Sasori and Deidara are some of my oldest bjds, they still didn't have their nails the proper color. (proper being used rather loosely since some argue that the canon color is purple or other variants on ... dark colors.)

Well, Dei's nails were black at one point way back in the day when he had an oldschool Domuya body. But then I sold that and never bothered to redo the nails.

First I did Sasori's and they came out pretty splotchy because I was just using straight up black acrylic paint on them. But then when the paint was starting to dry up before I could finish, I added water to it to keep it alive and that actually made it flow better (I should know this after like five years of art school but I'm not always the best thinker when I'm feeling impulsive)

Anyway...

Deidara's came out much more smoothly thanks to the water. I'll have to keep that in mind when I eventually redo Sasori's.

forcing inspiration

Originally posted: March 23, 2012, 01:31
When inspiration isn't there, it's hard to force it or find a way to make things work. Sometimes I can jumpstart the inspiration by doing something that feels more like something that 'needs' to be done than like a creative endeavor.
Today I started out with fixing Shino's wig.

On the left we have Volks' Amakusa Shiro Tokisada, whose outfit and wig I acquired for Shinozaki. However, the whole curling in ends didn't do much for me so I took a flat iron to it. It mostly got rid of the curling but it did make the ends really frizzy. After ages of being lazy about this, I took boiling water to it to get rid of the frizz. (sidenote: the bangs never behaved like that for me. When I got the wig it wanted to part to the side the way I have it styled. But with more curling, something akin to the way everyone in my elementary school styled their bangs with a round brush)
After taking the wig off for styling, I noticed that Shino's eyebrows were rubbing off and decided to redo his faceup. All was going well until a sudden wave of extreme humidity swept in out of nowhere and caused my spray sealant to misbehave, messing up all my hard work. By this point I wasn't feeling up to starting over so I did what I could to make it tolerable until I feel like trying over again.

Probably the only clear shot I've gotten of Shinozaki in... ever. I'm really fond of him but he just doesn't always cooperate for photoshoots. A lot of that was his rather poorly designed neck hole. He was unable to move his head up and down but I fixed that today and now he has a lovely range of motion in his head and I feel like it just brings him to life.
Shino is probably one of the best 'happy accidents' to happen to me since getting into BJDs. With pretty much every other mold, I hand-picked it for a character or just loved it to death and had to find a way to make it work. But Soom's Chrom never appealed to me. Some owner pics made him look really good, but not the kind of good where I'd think "I want one." But then I was looking for a new head for Lyric and was getting desperate and saw a particularly sad looking Chrom and thought "you know. This could work."
Of course, in person it was all wrong for Lyric. He looked far too Asian and, while he can pull off sad, it's not the Lyric kind of sad. He ended up in the floating head cabinet for months. And then one day I decided it was time to clean him up and take sale pictures and as I was getting him out of the cabinet and heading to the bathroom in search of alcohol to wipe his face off with, I realized what I wanted to do with him.
Reminiscing tangents aside, I did do one other mini-project today. That was to make Esyrlon and Theorin rings:

They're the same style, but Esyrlon's is silver and Theorin's is gold. (Theorin really needs more character-appropriate clothing so he doesn't look so out of place next to Esyrlon). I got the idea because I was trying to think of a new way to do Eyrlon's stole/scarf deal because the gold chain deal wasn't really meshing with his ensemble. I decided I wanted to stick with more silvers and was considering other sorts of adornments people have worn throughout history when it occurred to me that I tend to neglect rings, despite the fact that those are some of the most common jewelry that people wear.
So I decided Esyrlon needed at least one. And then I got the idea to give Theorin a matching one. Kind of like wedding bands or something. (Which would make sense seeing as they are married. Or the Elvish equivalent of married.) If I had some sort of fancy metal cutting stuff I'd probably have made them thinner. They're made from discounted earrings.
Made a couple extras for fun. (tried to do matching ones for Elaria and Malesar too but Elaria's fingers are SO tiny.. it didn't work out). Off to sleep now. Goodnight!

sewing project cont.: perseverance

Originally posted: March 18, 2012, 04:07
After spending a long time watching Scrubs and trying to forget about my horrible sewing failure this morning, during a talk with (read: rant to) Selly I finally got an idea for how to fix things. So we ran off to the store to get a seam ripper (because somehow both of mine got lost in the move. Which is actually really sad because I stole one of those from my mom and have been using it since I was pretty young..)
Anyway, I was able to fix the undersized sleeve with a hideous patch, but it's the under side of the sleeve and the side that wraps under so it won't show. And as I said before... what matters is the visual. If you can't have the whole package deal, that is. But we've already established that I can't.

I do not know what went wrong here. Taking photos under the same lighting conditions as earlier but somehow this was super un-cooperative and Esyrlon looks like a zombie or something.
Not the point though. So um... I fixed the sleeve. Then I took in the inner layer so it wouldn't interfere with how things worked as much. I neatened up the collar some and hand-embroidered some weird little swirlies on it to sort of add a bit of flavor to it. It looked really plain still, so I grabbed my pliers and modified the mini-necklaces Esyrlon was wearing into one piece and added the little red dangly pieces so a bit more was going on there.
The over the shoulder dealy I mentioned before came out more like a cross between a stole and a scarf. Which is a better spawnling than the poncho/yukata mix. In my opinion. Overally, I'm much happier with things than I was. It's still ... I like the outfit but I'm not sure I can see it as everyday wear. Maybe without the stole/scarf.
Still need to make the belt. and I'm not sure if I still feel that butt capes are necessary. Will have to contemplate this.
Off to sleep for now! Goodnight!