Face-up on Dark Tan Resin

I’ve had an interesting experience recently in doing a face-up, for the first time ever, on a dark resin doll. Mirodoll Mika received a face-up some time ago and it was the first time I’d ever worked on any kind of a tan doll of any hue. I’d been somewhat intimidated by the prospect, thinking it would be a lot more challenging than the normal/white resin work. And sure enough, it did provide its challenges, but it was fun too and not as difficult as I’d feared.

First of all, dark resin can have sanding residue and seem dusty. It’s quite normal though and can be fixed. This was the case also with my girl. I had to have my Mika, who’s in Miro’s dark chocolate resin tone, polished before I could start working on her face-up. The folks I commissioned to do it, did a great job and used wool to get a really nice and even finish on it with no traces of the resin dust on the doll anywhere. It left the doll looking pretty shiny, as I had expected, so I had to make sure the first sealant layers were as nice and even as possible.

I was bit worried, it being winter here in Finland with some freezing temperatures, about how would the Mr Super Clear sealant react particularly in connection with the dark resin. I’d seen some flaky white sheen on some dark resin dolls when the sealant has gone bad while spraying and I was obviously hoping to avoid that. I tried to keep the spray warm and only popped by ourdoors to do the actual spraying. It was not too windy and the temperature of was only around -5 C that day, so it didn’t cause any ill effects on my dolls face when I did the first layer. The resin tone on the face did get lighter slightly as I progressed with layers, even if I tried to keep it to minimum. I did 5-6 layers in total during the face-up work. I still feel like the finish is not too bad though.

My face-up equipment:

- Schmincke soft pastels

- Derwent watercolour pencils

- Winsor & Newton acrylics

- Mister Super Clear matt UV-cut sealant

- Vallejo Game Colour acrylics and varnishes

- Citadel gloss varnish

- loads of different sized and shaped brushes

-exacto knife for removing dust from the face-up

- Elmer’s white glue for attaching eyelashes

I started the face-up and instead of the usual pink pastel tones for the blushing, I went with browns. Everything with pastels worked just like normal, but obviously I just used darker tones to create the shadowing and effects.

The first surprises came when the watercolour pencils that I usually use for lower lashes and eyebrow hairs, did nothing at all. The colour just would not stick and the pencil scraped the sealant layer. I had to switch to acrylics and brushes for those instead. I’m not used to using brushes to create super thin lines very often, so that proved a bit challenging and I dare say the result is not as neat as I would’ve liked. I think if I gained better control of the brush and managed to thin the brush hairs down a notch, I’d get much better results. It’s worth practicing and potentially I might be able to do finer lines with the brushes than I get with the pencils. I still prefer the pencils, but it’s another technique to work on for sure.

I’d finished with the face-up when I noticed I’d run out of black eyelashes!! Nooooo!! Lol! I tried on brown ones, but they didn’t stand out enough in the dark skin. I ended up using blue ones and that actually resulted in a very fun effect! I’m actually pleased now that I didn’t have the boring black one after all. ;)

Here’s the before and after shots now then:

Mika has gotten three photoshoots since then, mostly promo shots for Mirodoll. Mirodoll has already uploaded her photos on their website. Apollo also got a face-up and his sales page is also updated now! They're still running a sale event too. Mika for 40% and Apollo for 10% sale. Mika in particular is a steal at the price she's going at the moment. I'm loving mine and can't wait to experiment more with different kinds of looks with her!! :)

Mika's sales page

Apollo's sales page