Any tips for photographing white skin dolls?

For my white-skinned boy, I usually just try to create some sort of shading for him. It's really funny when you see the rooms I'm taking pictures in because almost everything in the room will be thrown askew as I try to get the lighting as perfect as I possibly can. There'll be pillows over windows or balanced carefully over chairs, or sometimes a random umbrella in the middle of the room in a seemly unaffecting place (it's helps, usually I think).
Other then that, I just avoid flash like it's going to kill me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get a non-washed out picture of white skin with flash, so I gave up and just didn't use it. Got some interesting pictures that way though.