Faceup critique?

It looks like your pictures aren’t showing up love!

 

I'm not sure if this is on my side, but I can't see your photos.

If I had to take a guess though, something like this might help: Logically Illogical — I am currently taking a class called “Visual...
This is an exercise for improving your confidence with decisive pencil strokes on paper. This should decrease wobbliness.

It may also help to do some practice with lines on a headcap. If you do that, you should be able to build confidence on a curved surface as well.
Although, I'm not totally sure about the specifics. Like do faceup artists usually seal the headcap before they practice on it? Is it from a different doll? Thats something I don't really know, as I know about art but not faceups specifically -A-;

Good luck

 

No pics for me, either. From what you said, however, if you press hard when drawing, you'll probably want to get that pressure under control, or you'll be constantly frustrated, even working with pencil. With the pencil you'll want to build up a line with more than one stroke, rather than press hard to try to get the depth of color in one go.

Working with a brush is totally different, especially for fine lines like this. My advice is, granted, biased, as I worked on a graphic novel for several years. But the line work is mostly done with brush and taught me a lot of control, which came in handy when I tried faceups. You might try getting a really good, fine brush and a bottle of india ink and practice on a smooth sheet of paper. Flat. Get that pressure under control before you try to shift to a 3D canvas like a faceplate. You don't really get do-overs once you start laying down your lines on the faceplate. Practice eyebrows, eye lashes, and just simple lines of varying width. Try to practice enough until you get to a point where you can relax your hand.

India ink is cheap and cleans with water and it won't let you fudge/cheat. It gives you a clean, true line so you can clearly see how the pressure on the brush is changing the size of the line. Colored paints achieve their color with a variety of pigments. Some will flow more smoothly than others.

As for brushes, I don't know if we're allowed to post links, but I found these on Amazon and I think they'd be pretty good, tho I've never used this particular brand. It just looks like a nice variety of detail brushes that would let you experiment to find out what works for you. If the mods zap the link, just keep in mind that in choosing a brush, in general the smaller the number (2 1 0 000 00000) the finer they are, however the number of bristles isn't the only parameter to look at. Length of the bristles and shape of the end can make a difference, and which works the best for you can be idiosyncratic. Some people like really short bristles, others like really long ones.

I don't know anything about nail brushes, but as they are designed to work with enamels, I'd go for watercolor/art/acrylic natural fiber (probably sable) brushes. Good brushes will make all the difference in the world in how the ink/paint flows. You want something soft but resilient.

Anyway, hope this helps.

 

Ah! pictures!


Goodness. You didn't choose an easy sculpt to start with, did you? Before I say anything more, remember, there are very few "rights and wrongs" in art. There are the basics, and then there's what you turn those basics into. Rudolf Nureyev, the greatest male ballet dancer of all times used to say, he learned and practiced the rules so he knew when, how and why to break them. All anyone here can really do is tell you how they are reacting to your work. You are the only judge of whether we're seeing what you want us to see, and whether it's worth it to you to change to accommodate our aesthetics.

(Edit note The following gets very babble-y. Sorry. It's late. I have no idea if any of it is useful, but it's where my dumb brain went when I started thinking about it. Feel free to utterly ignore it.

So...keeping that in mind, now that I can see what you've done... I stand by my comment of getting your pressure under control for doing the line work with a brush because control of pressure is just a really really useful, but looking at the eyebrows, you've got a good sense where to put and angle hairs and that's good. Lower lashes are always going to be the most tricksy because of the sharp contour of the eye socket, and all you can do is practice until you can reliably achieve the effect you want. The hard underline for the brows, what I think of the makeup line looks pretty dark to me. That's generally...but not always...more of a guildeline for where to build the hairs for the brows, which actually achieve the natural look.

One thing to think about, if you're working under a direct worklight, it's going to make things lighter that they'll look in natural light, so your gut might scream at you to go darker than you actually need to. You might try taking photos at various stages to see how the camera sees the face vs how you're seeing it under the worklight.

Going back to your two-D work...how much have you worked with color? It's a little difficult for me to tell what is supposed to be exotic makeup and what is contouring. I find the lime green under the eyes to be quite disconcerting. I want to look at the beautiful eyes, but instead I'm drawn to the green circles under them.

In general, you might want to keep your contour shading very light and subtle. Typically, cool tones (usually a neutral or cool blue for human flesh) are used for areas that recede...around the base of the nose, the depression between the mouth and the chin, the temples, underside of the jawline, with the pinks and yellows (again for human skin) for the higher points. The idea on a three-D object is not to create shadows the way light will, but to enhance the contours of the sculpt.

That being said, if you're going for a non-human look, the contour colors become a little trickier. The best advice I would have in either case is to just look for faceups you like, then analyze the colors they've used. A good exercise is to try to achieve the effect you want with just a few colors. Most contouring can be achieved with three colors, a cool, a neutral and a warm. Which variant of those three you use will change the complexion. No matter what anyone tells you, there's no absolute when it comes to cool or warm. It's all relative and determined by which color recedes and which comes forward. For example, a true blue will recede next to a turquoise (green-blue) and Prussian blue (a red blue) will recede from them both. It's all part of the color game, and how you can achieve "color" contours in monochrome.

With that in mind, each resin color will give you a different background layer and you might want to just play with different color schemes to see which you like best on the given sculpt.

With the makeup, you can go wild, but unless you want to go with really exotic, hard-edges shapes, you still probably want to build it up with larger brushes, and blend the colors one to the next. You probably still want to tend toward cool tones in the crease of the eye and warmer tones on the lid and brow, but not necessarily. But I think of the makeup as an addition to the contours.

Personally, I'd keep the linework, the lashes and final lines of the brow, and the eye crease(s) for last, after a nice clearcoat to protect all the contouring.

The lips are really nicely shaped and that's not an easy sculpt to do the lips on.

Good grief. Sorry. Going to bed!

 

Silly question perhaps, but what is that head mold? How does the tongue move?

 

""Logically Illogical — I am currently taking a class called “Visual...". @mincy ,
Thanks for sharing this educative link!