Painting Freckles

These are by far the BEST freckles I've ever seen on a doll.
Absolutely gorgeous!

 

My KDF has a sparse freckles on his face, and I just water down some acrylic paint (a lot), then I used an old toothbrush to flick over his face. I used a damp Q-tip to get rid of any unwanted marks.

 

I can't wait til I can give freckling a doll a go! All of your doll freckles look sooo amazing.

 

Freckles on dolls are so cute I'd love to give mine some - but I haven't been brave enough to attempt is since I don't have MSC or some kind of sealant and don't want to ruin her faceup

 

I am very much a "gotta see it" learner. This is so so helpful! The results are magnificent! Thanks.

 

I used dark brown pastels applied with a very fine (10/0) paintbrush...they're rather large but I wanted a stylized look.

 

Here is my boy with his freckles.
Its the first time I have done this on a doll, so dont be to hard on me ;p


[X][X]

I looked a bit at the tutorial from inuchick on page 2.
Used a very light orange/brown acrylic paint.
watered it down a lot and dotted it, in several layers, on his face.
Then finished with a lot of blush.

 

Omg, I just tried that technique and it really works! *-*
My boy finally has the perfect faceup! ;_;

 

here's my freckled mnf Rheia, Hershey

 

Its just an idea, but would using VERY watered down watercolour on a brush, then almost like flicking it on work? It would be moreso at random, but I saw a makeup tutorial (for a living person, not a doll) that gave me the idea.
Its not freckles, but maybe that same tecnique could be used? Or if you want to make your doll look like a wood sprite, that works too.
(Here's a link to the tutorial. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2pSJQ6Jt_8 )

 

It depends how you want the freckles to look. If you get brown and orange paint , like two parts orange one part brown and then add water to it until it's loose but not entirley runny you should have the stuff to make freckles.

The easiest and most realistic way to get them it to get this loose mixture on a medium sized paintbrush and use a pier of cardboard to flick speckles of paint onto your dolls head.

 

that's how i do it, and is the only way that looks the most natural from everything i've seen. just cover parts you don't want freckles on with a tissue, and dab at any freckles that end up too big, etc. then add a little blushing.

 

personally, I wouldn't use a tooth brush. it's uncontrollable and an overall mess. But that's just an opinion.

I followed what chrisity did and it worked perfectly!

painting them on individually with a skinny paintbrush and dabbing it with your finger. Then use brown(ish) pastels to go over the dense areas. Makes them look gorgeous!

I am no artist, but I really liked my faceup because of Christy's adivce. :3

((I'll try and post a good picture later, gotta take one first xDD)

 

some advice, don't put too many freckles on the forehead, exspecially if your wig has no bangs.
you don't want them to look like acne D:

 

I used watered down acrylic paint with some clear acrylic medium added.

 

Seems freckles is one of the harder things to do but the ones posted here are great especially Christy's

 

I totally love freckles, they look really beautiful on girls. I do like them on guys, but only guys with a certain personality.

 

I re-did them, this time adding more pastels and more random freckles instead of perfect ones.

I really am pleased with the end result

 

I just finished my first ever face-up and really wanted freckles on my little girl, but I almost didn't do it because I was afraid of ruining my halfway decent first face-up...I used watercolor pencils because the thought of using paint terrified me..I only had a dark brown pencil, and my girl is white skin, but I figured at the very least, I could get the process down before doing the real thing....
Watercolor pencil made it so easy! Anytime I messed up or made anything too dark (or made a line instead of a dot lol), I just dabbed it with a wet q-tip, and poof, it was fine! If anyone is worried about making freckles, just use watercolor pencils! If you mess up, it just takes a little bit of water and it's like you never messed up : D
And just because I'm way too proud of my first face-up, here's my freckled cutie (forgive the white hair, she's waiting on her brown wig) :

 

I use burnt sienna for my color and then I water it down liberally. I wipe the brush several times and then use my finger to spay the paint where I want it, then use a small brush to manipulate the freckles or take ones away that I don't like. I feel it looks more natural this way, but this was my first time.

 

I did the "paint splatting" method to give my boy full body and face freckling- with this I think the key is to do the freckles FIRST, then blush- it fades some of the lighter ones, and makes the darker ones stand out just enough:



Pardon the bad lighting- this is an old photo.

 

I used watered down Acrilic paint and a tooth pick n.n

 

oooh that shounds really tempting. I'm going to try this I think, maybe mixed with the toothpick idea. It probably looks very natural and light which is just what I want.

 

Best or most natural looking results with watercolor paint and a very small brush, do dots and then LET it dry. Very organic shapes to the freckles and less of the Jackson Pollock look you'd get by spattering them.

 

Teruchan, I like your boy's full body freckles. They look great.

I'd like to try freckles someday, but I wanted to do something small for my first attempt at customizing one of my dolls. With all the comments and tips, I was encouraged to pull out the brown colored pencils and give Hiro a few beauty marks. I didn't have any Mr MSC, but the spots on his face seem safe enough.

Ginger likes his spots.

 

wow i like freckling i didnt think i woulf

 

Yes, I love freckles, and can't wait to have a go

 

Thanks so much tenukihandcrafts! It was my first go doing freckles (and I'm no seasoned faceup artist either) but I really had fun doing it this way, and you can't really mess it up (unless you spray too close!)

 

Wow I love everybody's freckled faces! This thread has really given me ideas, especially Christy's and inuchick's tutorials are tempting to try. I also looove your freckled face!! @Sims
Thanks everyone for your suggestions

 

hmmm... now I might just have to give bonnie (my bbb elfkin) some freckles.

 

I use the flick method, using a warm brown and terra cotta orange. Watered waay down. I'd hold the brush about an inch(ish) away from the face, and then just flick x3
If you want darker ones, get a little more paint and do it again where you want them.
Make sure the brush is a firmer one, not a soft brush.

 

Hmn, i did Anni's freckles using acrylic paint on a toothbrush. First i determined the color i wanted, then mixed the right shade, i dipped the toothbrush *completely dried* into the paint and slid my finger across it to "flick" freckles on her from about 6-10 inch distance. They show up all over the face but you can use a wet paper towel to immediately wipe away the freckles from spots you do not want them on.

Bigger version --- > http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/130/0/f/annie_by_teentitansgo123-d3g2oel.jpg



She is my first ever BJD a Super Mini Nono From dollzone and this is my first time doing a face-up. btu being an artist i find that freckles are the most beautiful when completely random and spurratic. using the toothbrush method it's almost hard to mess up

I use this same method for models and photography and costume. (IE a white deer costume needs grey freckles across the nose and forehead, i just whipe out my toothbrush and face paints *in place of acrylic XD*)

 

Oooh, freckles...I was so afraid to try them. But I used inuchick's tutorial on the second page, and now I love doing them^^

my three favourites:


Nicole0911's boy. He pretty much painted himself :3


Kuroneko's girl. I've never seen a freckled DD before so she was quite and experience to paint :3


Hilarie's Bandi. I'm really proud of her faint freckles.

I've realized though that I tend to paint them in a stripe...it's cute, but so not realistic I'll try to find a more natural shape...

Except for this boy here...no stripe, at all XDDD


But I'm afraid I overdid the darker ones. Ah, he also belongs to Hilarie :3

 

Thanks all for their ideas and for the great tutorial. Now on to my first face ups.

 

I've decided I want freckles on my PukiPuki when he/she/it arrives, so this thread is very very helpful. I've tried practicing with the pencils, but I end up making patterns, so it doesn't look natural.

 

Please share them! I've seen a lot of great freckles, and a lot of less great ones, I want to know what separates the two.

 

I'm definatly not an expert, but my favorite method for subtle freckles is to wet some brown pastel, dap it on with my smallest paintbrush, and then dap my finger against it to lighten it. I know, I know, oils on my fingers, but it's the best method I've found so far.
That's how I did the freckles on Knox's faceup


Much better than my first try at freckles using orange acylic, my mum asked me why she was covered in chicken poxs

 

Freckles are most realistic when they are "random" in their spread and color variation. The human brain is absolutely awful at mimicking randomness, so I would suggest looking through pictures of actual people with freckles, either on google images or on deviant art (looking at photo portraits with keyword freckles) to find a face that approximates what you're looking for. I'm not sure if you have freckles or not, but I have about a million and they vary a lot in color (ie how dark or light), placement, or size.

Here's a good example:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Eris-girl-h...854?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item35b44b5e16

I actually think I saw those pictures on this board somewhere (meaning the pics may be stolen...) but look how beautiful and unusual her face is! It's interesting that she has a few scattered dark freckles in unusual places (ie not on the cheeks) and so her face seems almost alive.

Freckled dolls are so cute!

 

None of my boys have freckles, and I'm always forgetting to take pictures of faceups I've done for people, but I like to work with 3-4 shades of watercolour pencil. The lightest shade will be all over the freckled area, and as I move darker there's a lesser amount in the area, but they still reach throughout. And the outer edge of the freckle area is loosely set... a darker freckle or two may stray. I also use a lot of tiny, half-open circles along with generally sloppy dots. I also do the freckles as my last layer, so I can set the head to the side and look at it for a bit to see if they look freckled.

 

Freckles are completely random, and they don't have any sort of respect for things like lips or eyelids - as a very freckled person, I can attest to this.

The best method I've found is to dilute some paint so that's is extremely thin - like water with a tiny little bit of acrylic in it. Then, dip your paintbrush into it, flick it until it's very nearly dry, then using your fingers, flick the hairs of the brush in the direction of the doll. It gives a lovely random effect of different sizes and spacing.

Doing this with a few different shades of colour will give you a wonderful freckled look.

 

Being a control freak when it comes to faceups, I absolutely would never use the flicking method, LOL. I paint each individual freckle. I use thinned acrylic paint and dip just the very tip of a dry paintbrush (I think the brush I use is like a size 2 round, so you don't even need a super-thin brush) and carefully paint the freckles on. What you want to avoid when painting freckles is having them be too wet when you apply, because what happens is as the paint drop dries, the color will concentrate around the edge of the drop, and you will end up with a light freckle that has a darker outline. Using a dry brush is how I avoid that and so far it has worked really well for me! Any freckles that don't turn out as planned are easily wiped off with a damp q-tip.

I've only done a few faceups with freckles but using the described method, this is what I got:




As far as making freckles look natural, my only advice is to study photos of freckled peoples. Many times freckles look bad on dolls because they are too dark, too large, the wrong color, or too uniform. There are definitely people out there with very dense freckles that are also dark, but I have yet to see that work on a doll, so perhaps that type of freckling just doesn't translate well to a smaller scale? Light freckles are much easier to pull off, I think. My general feeling on doll freckles is that it's the kind of detail I only want to see from up close, so they need to be subtle. :]

 

I also use colored pencils... Two different colors, but more would be even better. I sharpen the pencil to a fine point and draw them on in random sizes. Then I take a brush that is lightly damp and dab them so they become softer. It's better for them to be a shade of yellowish brown, rather than reddish brown. When it's reddish, that's when it starts to look like a disease.

 

I like to use watercolors for my freckles, and paint them on in differing darknesses and sizes. It's hard to get a random look when your brain wants to space things evenly but you can do it with practice.

 

I use extremely watered down water colours, and then use the flick with a paintbrush method. I do several layers, always very watered down, to get a deeper variation.

This is an example of "ginger" freckles, ie. all OVER freckles, though I wanted them to be very light. I didn't do this example, my best friend did his frecklies, but this is how she taught me how to do it, so this example works, I think.





And this is an example of freckles I've done with the same method, though in this case I wanted the freckles to be more obvious, and to be more of "sun freckles", the kind people get when they go out in the sun a lot.

 

Existing thread on this topic: http://www.denofangels.com/forums/showthread.php?119924-Painting-Freckles

 

This will definitely be an addition to my red headed come summertime

 

Fffff now I want to get a red-headed doll and put freckles all over him. All these example pics are just lovely.

 

Hello, I want to know how to get life like looking freckels on a doll, face, & body. I thought of the old "flick a toothbrush, but need some pointers. Thanks!

 

I used a fan brush actually. I took some reddish brown acrylic and used paint thinner to thin it down (I find it gives a better color then water) and then I soaked the fan brush in the paint and ran my finger along the fan, changing up how I held the brush. It gave me a lot more control then the tooth brush. Afterwards if I though they were too dark I took a paper towel and just dabbed them and made them fainter and then if there were freckles that I didnt like I used a piece of magic eraser to wipe them.



(Ignore the toothbrush I didn't use it for this)

 

This is *exactly* what I was looking for! Thank you so much, Christy. Your Annalisa is lovely.

 

Just did freckles on my Iplehouse BID last night. Used two different colored watercolor pencils, sharpened them to a point and dotted lightly on nose and cheeks. I love the way it came out and it was so much easier than I thought! Also, just washed mistakes right off.

 

I'm going to be doing freckles on my boy's face and body once he arrives home and this thread has been very helpful in showing the different methods....thank you everyone.

 

Thank you for this wonderful guide!
I'll be using it when my new girl arrives

 

This totorial it great, you can use this to make your bjd the most unique with a simple thing. Thank you.

 

I love freckles! Thanks for the tutorial.

 

I used a watercolor brown pencil and got a little carried away. But my Vora loves her freckles.

 

I had no idea there was a toothbrush method. I spent like 3 hours painting her freckles last night, all individually. They are very tiny, though.



I'm going to use the same technique on her body, tonight.

 

I've been tossing up whether or not to go with freckles for one (or even both) of my planned boys, but after seeing all these dolls and how good they look with them, I'll almost definitely give at least one of them some sort of freckling.

 

thank you for sharing your methods about freckles!! That's great

 

Here is a girl I did with the toothbrush splatter method. I pat the paint spots with a paper towel to make them less intense and re-splatter 3 or 4 times.