Aesthetics First Face-up Attempt

Hi! You did an amazing job! I'm excited for you that you've started to do your own face-ups, I know when I do my own face-ups it really helps me bond with my dolls and I'm able to get exactly what I want.

I do know some things that I think would help your next attempt when sealing your doll make sure it's not too humid outside, your can of sealant should tell you the safe levels of humility. After spraying wait at least an hour after before working on it again. If it seems like the pencils are rubbing sealant then it was either too humid or you haven't waited long enough after sealing.

I personally shade with pastels anywhere I'm planing to use pencil or paint (i.e eyelashes, brows, lips) when doing the brows I very lightly shade with a color that is slightly lighter than the color I'm going to use to add the individual hairs with, for white brows I would probably use a light natural pink, just a little darker than the resin tone. I personally always use acrylic paint for brows and eyelashes, I just find it easier and that it looks a bit better. You have to have acrylic paint thinner for this technique though. I use quite a bit of thinner until it's just a bit thicker than water and then use just a tiny bit of paint on my small detail brush at a time. One more tip for brows and lashes, find a place to put your pinky finger on the head, that way you will have more stability when painting the hairs, same goes for eyelashes, and weather you're using paint or pencil. Sorry for going on and on! I hope this was helpful and if you have any questions just let me know. Again great job!

 

I love white lashes and brows too! I actually cleaned off one of my dolls to redo her faceup, and I'm planning on that style for her!

I also prefer to use acrylic paint, but you can achieve the look with pencils. I've only ever had luck with watercolor pencils on maybe one or two faceups, but the trick I found is, you'll still need to do multiple layers of drawing the lines. And don't make them too-too sharp. You don't want a needle-point on them, since that's what ends up scratching off the sealant. I will usually end up sharpening a pencil to a needle point if I can, but then I will doodle on some scrap paper to round the point down just a bit. And then, you need to lightly drag the pencil point across the head, rather than press the point hard onto the head.
That's where more layers come into play. When you spray sealant, the 'tooth' it adds on makes the surface bumpy to use pencils - that's how watercolor pencils can often result in a thick/gritty/chunky look. So you'll need to seal overtop a pencil line, and keep adding more untill you have a nice, full, saturated line, instead of a patchy line. That's why some people prefer paints; while you have more control over a watercolor pencil for drawing, paints fill in all the bumps on the surface all on one layer, which is why they don't look gritty.

But overall very nice work! Your blushing is very nice and even, and she has such a nice rosy-cheeked look!

 

Although many people like to make white eyebrows really stand out, yours are much more realistic. My entire best friend's family has pale blond hair with naturally white eyebrows -- especially when they're young. And guess what? From a distance it looks like they have no eyebrows or just the subtlest hint. There's nothing wrong with more obviously white brows, but honestly I prefer how subtle and natural yours are.

 

Hopefully this will help a bit! For white eyebrows it's best to layer the white a lot. Take a look at some of these faceups and notice what they have in common:

Faceup 1:
http://www.izasfaceups.com/uploads/1/2/4/2/12424424/4044592_orig.jpg
http://www.izasfaceups.com/uploads/1/2/4/2/12424424/5079797_orig.jpg

Faceup 2:
http://www.izasfaceups.com/uploads/1/2/4/2/12424424/3750149_orig.jpg

Faceup 3:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2932/14030508200_a0f5010df7_c.jpg

Generally to get nice, vibrant white eyebrows you're going to want to lightly shadow beneath the brows, and give a small dusting of a slight blush along the forehead just to give a bit of life to the plain, pale resin underneath. Then what you're going to want to do is lay down a couple thin layers of white pastel to give your eyebrows a "base". If you blushed the shadows in beforehand and sealed it, then laid down the white, you should notice that even the thin layers of white pastel stand out a bit from the skin behind it. After you've laid down that base you need to go in with white watercolour pencil and/or acrylic (personally for white eyebrows I would do both, lay down a couple layers of white pencil eyebrow hairs and then go in with the acrylic and give some highlight strokes to really make it pop).

You could do like faceup 2 and lay down some grey to build off as a base, but if you're going for that ethereal look I would suggest just using white by itself.

 

She looks really lovely as she is-- I'm a natural ginger, but I've got blonde eyebrows that completely disappear they're so pale, so there isn't a problem with the way they're sort of invisible. However, when I did Pete's faceup, I wanted him to have very visibly white eyebrows. What I did was to use pastels to put down a layer of silvery grey (though one could use a pale platinum blonde tone), and then I did the pure white strokes over that, and they really stood out. Boosting the pink around her eyes would make the lower lashes more apparent, but what I see of them looks really good. You could also brush a single coat of gloss over the brows to make them stand out-- not as glossy as lips would be, but so that they have a bit of a sheen the way hair would. It would make for a 'textural' visual difference and make them stand out a little while still being very pale/faint.

I really love how soft and natural the overall blushing on her is, and her lips look great. Overall I think it's a really beautiful first faceup.

 

I know I am a little late to the party here, but I spied a faceup recently that had a really interesting workaround to this problem: the colour was almost identical to the ones you have done, but they used glue to build up fake eyebrows so they stood out from the face and cast their own shadows. The effect was brilliant! I was out running errands at the time and can't find it again, sadly, but it might be another thing to try that wouldn't take a ton of time to experiment with. Good luck!

 

The color is soft. But I think you should sharpen the color pencil. Of course paint does better than color pencil, it's just a little bit hard to use at first. You can slightly add some light purple and blue(very little) to the skin such as around the eyebrow and under eyes, it will make the skin more real and rich.

 

Love it! It looks really natural and soft. People already presented you some tips on the brows, so I' m not gonna comment on that. But what I would have made a bit different is maybe making the are where the lips meet a bit darker to add a shadow and a bit dimension. But otherwise it' s extremely good! Congrats on being so talented!