Luka - First BJD head

So I just joined, upon recommendation of my girlfriend, Myrretah, and poked around a few threads for a few days... and my first real post is also my first real sculpt. Be gentle loves, as this is only my second try at sculpting anything even remotely resembling a human face. My first attempt was some years ago; a small doll face the size of my fingernail, and I started a torso with it, but who knows if I'll actually get back to it. Anyway. Luka, my little darling, is a character I've had for years. Eight or nine years, I think. Not important. Could never find a shell for him, so I decided to make one. This guy is actually out of date, and has been reformed in LaDoll. I started with Marblex, but it's a finicky clay, and doesn't like being reconstituted over and over, I've noticed. His face actually got mushed at some point or another, so I'm reshaping him. But you can see the progress from the start.

I used a Moxie Teens wig stand as a base to hold my sculpt while I worked, but all the features were thoroughly covered. I wanted to make sure that the face wasn't getting deformed as I worked, and that I didn't squish the features I had just added.




I added clay in itty bitty increments for most of this. These are some various angles to test the planes of the face and make sure they're more or less balanced before I removed him from the base to keep working. I had to wait until the clay reached the "leather" stage to pry it off without mushing it. I had wrapped the base with plastic wrap and taped it down so it wouldn't shift, so when it was time to remove it, I just snipped up the back of the plastic and tape, and pulled the whole thing off.






I removed him from the base and cut out the eyes. I took this pics to send to my girlfriend while she was at work. I had been buzzing about the progress I'd made on him, and she wanted to see as I went along.



I worked til nightfall, and until it was time to start dinner. (Ironically enough, there was traffic, and dinner ended up sitting for an extra fifteen minutes, but I didn't want to walk away and risk the low simmer I put the sauteed tomato and beef concoction I'd made turning into a boil or worse...) I thought I was done for the night.




Nope, I wasn't done at all. After we ate, we decided to go into the studio again, and while Myrretah got fiddly with her FOUR in progress sculpts, and started working on a fifth, I stared at Luka. And stared summore. The smile was intended to be a sorta sweet little half-smile, but really, it just looked like he had a crooked mouth. (There was a crooked man, that walked a crooked mile...) So I got some soggy clay and went to work. Then I wanted to keep going, and sculpted the eyelids. And started carving the ears. Then finished carving the ears, and began back-fulling the shell. Then suddenly, there was Luka, smiling up at me. My sweet little Luka. I actually got a little teary-eyed. I put him on my dresser next to one of my big BJDs overnight.





But wait! There's more! This morning, we slept in, because we were both off from work. Both of us pretty much made a beeline for the studio. Before coffee! You do not understand how major this is. I decided to finish backfilling the shell, and make proper eye-wells, and then start building the back of the head. He's going to be a face-plate that will be compatible with the MSD line Myrretah will be making. He will have 2 face-plates: a human one, that you see currently, and an ear-less one, with a pair of magnetic fox-ears, which you can see the beginnings of, behind his head. I think I need to make them bigger.




Luka!!