Aesthetics Customizing DollZone Anson

So after many months I decided to finally tackle Anson's customization. It very much requires an airbrush so I borrowed one from a friend. The complete package, compressor, pipettes and such. I supplied the paints and the cleaner.
I have zero airbrush experience, so that was part of my hesistation in starting this project. Having now done most of the airbrushing, I can say it actually wasn't too bad.

I bought Vallejo premium paints because I'm already familiar with their canned sealant, and because they say the paint can be used as is. I wasn't confident I could thin out paint well enough myself.
I used the colors 'Candy Yellow', 'Fluorecent Blue' and 'Fluorecent Pink'. I also used a set of metallic duochrome colors called 'Star Dust'

My thinking was that the metallic colors would dull down the intensity of the base colors, hence why I picked really bright ones. I was largely correct about that, so I'm happy.

I started with a layer of matte sealant. Then I applied my three base colors.


These were my first attempts. The big piece has the blue somewhat uneven, but I think it's fine since flowers aren't perfectly symetrical generally.

After the first application of metallic sheen it looked like this:


Two days later I felt brave enought to tackle the rest and got to work.

This photo shows well how the orange/violet metallic toned down the very intense yellow. The pink parts have a red/gold metallic applied to them, the blue parts blue/green.

The outer sides are now all finished as far as airbrushing goes. I put on a coat of matte varnish and then a satin finish.



I still have to finish the inner sides, fix any imperfections (of which there are many - I am a beginner after all) and paint the faceup and any details I want.
Since I very much reached the limit of what I personally can accomplish with an airbrush I will fix the flaws with pastels and duochrome powder. And will also apply more matte varnish on those parts before of course (should've held off on the satin varnish probably, but I wanted to see what that looked like).
I'm hoping to used my canned sealant for this and the face because I struggled to apply the matte airbrush varnish in a way that would provide grip. Will test in an inconspicuous spot.

That's the status of my project. I'm fairly happy with my progress, I honestly thought I would do way worse. This result though, I can work with.

 

Thank you, everyone! You're all very encouraging!

I did her faceup today. For some reason the green eyebrows barely show up on camera. Will have to see about making them darker, hmm.

I think I did a good job matching the pastels of the faceup to the colors of the airbrushing otherwise. I'm a little less happy about the star on her forehead. Gold on Yellow was maybe a bad idea. Should've used white, maybe.
The green lashes I glued on were a complete pain in the butt! Took ages to get them positioned, even after I cut them in smaller pices to make that easier.
I also couldn't use the eyes I had planned because the dome on them was too high. 14mm also had some gapping at the sides in general...In the end I had to make new ones from scratch. They have flaws but that's not visible since her eyes are so small

And then I put her together...I was worried the process of restringing her parts would result in paint stripping and wanted to get it over with. Had some scratches but went better than expected.

I still haven't painted any details because I'm not sure what to do exactly. I was thinking maybe specks of cold? Hmm...

I also haven't finished her body blushing. I had an oopsie on her stomach where the airbrush dumped to much color. Looks a bit sunburned and will need to be wiped off and redone. Also needs some pastels still, some colorful ones to match her body to the petals a bit more. Maybe some more pinks at least.

Inside her petals looks like that:

I feel like it's somewhat the opposite of a real flower, where the outside is often darker than the inside. But I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, I generally like the colors I used.

Anyway, that's where I stand. Next I'm gonna fix and continue her bodyblushing. I will simply mask off her arms, maybe even her head, for this...minus the headback of course. I just don't want to touch her stringing. DollZone always strings so tightly.
When I'm done with that I will ponder detailing.