Faceups How do you get inspiration for a faceup?

you could try creating a mood board with make up looks that you like. if you are artsy you could try to edit some make up looks onto her face and test it out, or draw or trace her face and color it on paper. I don't have visual brain so I like to paint on makeup and photobash.
I find that I always make plans before my doll comes and I almost always change my mind anyway but you're right that you'll have an easier time styling her when she's not a totally blank slate.
if you're stumped on the face up, maybe make a clothes wishlist for her and try developing her make up based on how her style emerges.
Congrats on your Honoka, she is one of the cutest MNF in my opinion

 

Mood boards for sure. I can never seem to see a faceup in my head until I start looking through the general theme or aesthetic I have in mind. Eventually you'll stumble across a color or feature that will strike you as AHA I want this as the lip color! And it starts to develop from there.

If you have the apps/software, you can always take a good photo of the blank head and scribble or put color splashes on a transparent layer until you like what you see. Usually it takes me a few tries but eventually I like it enough to take a dive.

 

You could start looking at magazines or other media and find a face you like and try to work some version of that?

My latest I'm going to add some to it but the reason I have this head is because it had a really beautiful base faceup that I really liked already. She was originally a somewhat femme he, a fantasy character that was part dragon supposedly. So there's already a lot of lashes and eye liner and some gold around the eyes that with just a bit of additional eye paint will make a splendid girl's makeup. A bit more blush and that's all that's needed to turn the boy into a beautiful girl.

Sometimes it's something I have to figure out and do myself. Other times a picture or person's face is used for inspiration. Sometimes the doll comes with a stunning faceup already.

It's different for every doll I think..

 

I get my doll faceuppped then try wigs and eyes in them to I find a combination that works (easier once you have more than one doll that takes that size of wigs and eyes as you tend to build up a stock of wigs and eyes you can try on a new doll) and THEN "get to know them" in order to find out who they are and what their personality is like. I' e tried deciding it beofrehand and foudn the dolls balked at my choice for them and rejected it (my intended fashionista secret-agent is now a laid-back hippy chick).

Faceups are easy for the majority of mine as I have basically the same requirements for them all. Since most of them are children rather than teens or adults, their faceups need to be entirely natural looking (not like they're wearing makeup) with "neutral" eyebrows (nothing too expressive and looking as natural and unsculpted as possible), and tehy need to be as cheerful/happy-looking as the sculpt will permit.

I shopped around to find facup artists whose previous work I liked the look of before approaching any of them about doing the faceup. Once I find one I like, I tend to stick with them because I know I like their work and I trust them to come up with results that work for me. I can, for example, highly recommend @Jay (http://www.jayspetitesalon.com) on that basis. As a result there's a relatively small pool of atrtist who have worked on my dolls.

Teddy

 

I like to use Photoshop to play around with face up and modification ideas, for my doll customization projects. It's an easy way for me to plan what I'm going to be painting or modifying on my doll's faces. Also, very easy to undo or redo, as many times as I want without wasting anything other than a few MB of memory. Probably not helpful, to those who don't have or don't know how to use Photoshop, but it really is quite easy to learn and not so expensive now as it was in the old days (old fart, here!). (:

 

I do mockups on photoshop (can be any photo editing software, even using Instagram stories editor without sharing the photo afterwards work lol) to try out what fits and what not first, especially if I'm not sure about the sculpt or am thinking whether or not to buy it. I also make sure to edit/draw eyes in and a wig on, I find that makes a huge difference. Scribbling around for a bit usually does it for me

 

For me I start with character development as in a design, like what clothes, hair, etc they wear as I sneak in like brow color derived from a wig, eye color + outfit colors influence what complimentary colors to use in the faceup. You may have to do some development personality wise to determine the facial expression, but not necessarily deeper than that.
For actual makeup references, I use pinterest and look for human makeup as a starting point too

 

Admittedly, I let Pinterest help me out. If I create a board for their aesthetic, once I hit about 50 pins and then browse the recommended pins to add to board, there's usually some make-up and hair looks. It's especially helpful when styling aesthetics I don't use on myself. Plus, if you're planning to commission a face-up the board is usually very helpful to the artist to get the "vibes" down right.

 

When I have a doll I haven't figured out yet I like to give them a temporary "bare minimum" sort of face up, just to give them a bit of life.
I usually go with pastels only, maybe paint for eyeliner but no detail work. Nothing I would mind terribly much if I end up wiping completely. For the same reason I also keep the number of layers down, it's the sealing and waiting cycle that makes face ups take time after all, and it's sealer and time that makes them expensive.
I block in the eye brows with pastels in a neutral shade of desaturated brown, because it will usually look ok-ish with most natural wig colours. If I have no idea about the style I am going for at all, I'll keep the eyeliner a darkish brown, rather than full black for the same reason. Lips I usually just blush in a shade that compliments the skin tone of the doll. Same thing about general blushing and shading, I only do the bare minimum to make the head look less uniform in colour and I keep it simple, focus only on the obvious areas.

To me, this does wonders for testing wigs, eyes and clothes. A completely blank face can distract from the whole and especcially eyes never look quite right on a blank face.
More often than not I end up figuring the doll out quite fast after that and simply add to the face up, rather than redoing it completely. But even when I do decide to wipe it and start fresh, having allready worked on the face once before makes my "real" atempt go so much smoother.
And it's a good way to avoid having a doll sitting blank and "empty" for too long and become an abandoned project. Even a temporary face up tends to imbue the doll with enough personality than character developement starts to happen. At least, that's how it works for me.

 

This! I do this A LOT! I have boards for makeup, hair, clothing styles/feels/vibes. lol It's really great when I'm trying to put a characters look together.

 

Something no one has mentioned yet: in addition to human makeup references, you could look at painters or illustrators that you like, pick up details of the way they do faces. A faceup is just an illustration/painting, but on a 3d canvas!