Aesthetics Calien II - mods and aesthetics

Lumping mods and aesthetics together because I'm not going to keep three project journals for the same doll.

So yeah, I've gone completely bonkers and decided to mod an Iplehouse doll. Just elf ears, but if I were in my right mind, modding something this expensive with what little experience I have would scare me out of my mind. Luckily, my right mind is a place I've rarely visited since I got into dolls.

I already started a thread for her clothes and stuff, too.

Here she is, in a borrowed wig and faceless:


Anyway! I decided that since this lovely lady is supposed to be an elf, I'd better grit my teeth and mod her ears. I thought boiling and re-shaping might be an option, but ... not really. So out came the milliput.


The workspace:

Today's instalment of Advanced Insanity, starring:
- Milliput
- Fimo
- chalk pastels
- sculpting tools
- toothpicks!
- the doll('s head).

Not pictured: Cling wrap and water. Trust me, you'll want both.

For my last mods / projects I used Fimo to colour the Milliput - this time I went for translucent Fimo, hoping to make the end result a bit less flat and solid, and colour the mix with pastel instead. It's looking okay so far. (Fun fact: You can mix Milliput and Fimo in a 2:1 ratio and it will still set. The materials are similar enough for the Milliput to start a chain reaction that will cause the Fimo to harden, too. Bonus: Fimo makes the Milliput softer and generally better-behaved than it would be on its own.)


Protecting her pretty face:



Next I found me a nice reference / inspiration pic ... hello there, Arwen:

Sorry Aragorn, I love you but this is not your battle.


Pastels and putty making friends:


I didn't know how the colours would turn out ... the putty was not stark white any more, but even after hardening it's a good way from being skin coloured. Guess I was banking on the translucency too much ... oh well, she'll get a faceup and blushing and the wig will hide the "seamline".


The shape was surprisingly easy to get right! With the Bajoran nose mod I found SD scale was a lot harder to get right than human scale. This was the other way around.

Checking against the reference pic:



No pics of the actual sculpting. A few notes on milliput, though:
- Have some water ready. Dipping your tools / fingers in water will keep the milliput from sticking to them and make it easier to get a smooth(ish) surface.
- On the subject of surfaces: Don't worry about them right away. Try to get the general shape right while the putty is still soft, and worry about everything else later.
- Make sure you have several hours of time. The actual sculpting doesn't take long, but you want to take advantage of the setting process.
- Keep in mind this is not air-dry clay that hardens from the inside out. It's not exactly outside in either, but you can take advantage of it by waiting with surface work until the clay has stopped sticking to the tools / squishing out of shape. You'll have more time than you think.


The sculpting done:




I started at noon, as you can see by the time I considered myself done it was getting too dark to take decent pics ... yeah, you've got time.



Up next: Blushing and faceup. If anyone can point me towards a source of pearlex powder in Europe, I'd be very grateful!

Thanks for watching

 

Thank you! That means a lot to me coming from a doll artist like yourself

 

Thank you for both the compliments and the link! If they do sets they're bound to have one that includes what I need This is great, so far I only found single colours in much too large jars for my teeny tiny dolly projects

 

faaaace-UP!



Couldn't resist. (Crappy artificial light pic, I tried my best to fix it. As usual, by the time I was done painting her there wasn't enough daylight left for decent pics.) No pearlex powder (yet), but the weather was finally good enough for spraying Purity Seal and I had a spare hour and a half of daylight ... the eyelashes don't quite fit because I ran out, this is all that was left. I ordered new ones, these will be replaced as soon as they come in. The new ones will get trimmed, too - these completely hide her lovely green eyeshadow. Maybe I'll have the pearlex by the time I replace the lashes, I can upgrade her faceup then.
It doesn't show in pics but she has some cutesy little freckles, too I tried a new method with powdered pastel and a wet brush. It's a one-freckle-at-a-time thing, but I like how it turned out.
It's not perfect (yet), but at least I don't have a blank doll staring at me each time I look at the doll shelf ... and I won't have to spend the next two afternoons sitting on my hands in school knowing there's something I'd rather be doing! (We have parent conference days, I have to be there for four hours on both Thursday and Friday, but so far I'm "booked" for maybe one hour each day so there will be lots and LOTS of sitting around. I'll have to find something unobtrusive like embroidery or tiny jewelry that I can take with me and work on while I wait ...)

 

Thank you so much! Merci beaucoup

 

Thank you! I'm a big elf fan too, I wasn't really planning any BJD elves, but now I've started there may be more to come

 

Well, crap. For some reason the colour / sealer on her ears went tacky, and part of the blushing rubbed off ... weird, I used the same materials for the rest of the faceup and everything is fine except the ears.
Admittedly, it was rather cold when I sprayed her, and the ears are hard to seal properly, so that's probably it. The same materials didn't give me any trouble with my little Bajoran and the sealer can't be all bad because the rest of her face is just fine - but it will get re-done anyway, maybe with pearlex powder too this time around, and with darker freckles, they're so cute in person and invisible in pics ... I was planning a big dolly spa for the holidays anyway, complete with cleaning and body blushing for the ladies, and Cali just got a place on the waiting list.