Maintenance Using Pastels to tone down yellowing?

I have tried white pastel on a couple yellowed heads - it... doesn't do much, sorry with purples you'll have to be super light handed as it can end up looking like bruises pretty easily. You could try carefully dyeing the body with a purple mixture (try a test piece first) or sand the whole body to remove the upper yellow layer (use appropriate PPE), too, those would give a more even result

 

It's complicated...
You can probably do some blushing with pastels that focus on pinks/whites/beige tones and it might deceive the eye some, but the doll will still be really yellowed as whole. What it seems to work is sanding the whole doll with very fine sanding paper, but on top of E X T R E M E L Y worksome, you might also flatten some details in the process, specially on the face features.

 

It's "I know I laid down a few good layers and nothing happened" I used good quality artist grade pastel and I think if there is any lightening at all it's from the sealant.

You could also gently blush some yellow on top of the already-existing faceup, maybe it's a little less work that way?

 

Not sure if this will help you decide, but this is my Soom Aphan, yellowed, and wanted to put on to a Mia White body... here is the result. I can't remember how many layers, only a couple i think, but still added white when adding the colours. I used panpastels. Next time I wouldn't use a brush but a makeup sponge applicator to help thicken the pastel application.

Taken in natural light.

Spoiler: More pics

 

Panpastels do make a huge difference tbh. You can buy just the white so shouldn't be expensive if getting one colour (also I bought my Panpastels from ebay when folks are doing a clearout so managed to get mine for reasonable price, ie £3.50 per pan.).

Yes... the headcap I didn't bother blushing so is the resin colour the face was before I did the face up. I knew I couldn't match the body but wanted a compromise I was ok with. And it is (just)

Edited to say, just reread and you said you have panpastels already perhaps, so I would go for it. What do you have to lose (just time and the cost of the MSC )

 

Oh, good results! I used brush-on sealant so that might have something to do with it - it's easier to do thicker layers of pastel with spray sealant.

 

I’ve color matched heads from yellow normal resin to a peachier colored body (Peakswoods) also using pan pastels. I alternated layers of peach and white and eventually felt it was saturated enough.

I think It’s worth a try, anyway. It’s not going to hurt anything.

 

Sounds like you are going to have fun hope it works out for you, could you update with the result if possible? I am curious how it works for you, and how many layers you end up doing

Could be that, I have been meaning to have a go with brush on sealant but haven't got around to it. Tbh I haven't done any faceups this year and I have a row of expectant heads staring at me

 

I've used pastels twice to match heads to bodies - one was an old Bluefairy mini where the head was more yellowed than the still pinkish normal body. I used pink and light flesh-toned pastels there. Stick artists pastels (but you rub it back and forth on a scrap sheet of white paper and then use a soft brush to pick up the finest dust areas). She had a faceup but no eyelashes, so it was easy enough to waft some aerosol Zoukimura sealant over the whole face. Lightly though, and a final coat when done. I used Gold's liquid finish over the lips (I like semi-gloss and not gloss for lips.

Another time, I received a previously owned Dollmore doll - the body was still pure white but the head had yellowed. I used white pastels that time. She had eyelashes so I had to be really light when it was sealant time, and I'd made a little raft of fine bubblewrap to rest over the eyes/lashes (so had to keep the head flat for the sealant coats. I also didn't worry about getting into every corner and sharp edges (she also had a cheek "tattoo") so had to dab pastels here and there with a fine q-tip.

A neck seems easy but the movement of the head over time will scrape away whatever you apply to the topmost part. Same goes for a whole body color correction; the joint areas will look really bad after awhile unless the color alteration is really close to the original resin tone.

 

I had to match a slightly yellowed Unoa white resin face to a pinkish white spiritdoll body. Rather than using one color, I used many colors to counteract the yellow tint. Light blue, purple, and purple-pink pastels all worked together to offset the yellow. Make sure you use soft pastels that have a lot of white in the base so the saturation of the colors is low. White pastels dry nearly translucent when sprayed with sealants, so just white pastels won't do much.
If you want to use airbrush to color the resin, spray from a good distance away so the paint doesn't pool or build quickly. White acrylic/watercolor through an airbrush will dry opaque. So it may be better to match the starting resin color and slowly add cool tone pink.
Cool tone pink is the closest color next to yellow on the color wheel, so it will make the most subtle change.

Good luck!

 

Looking forward to hearing and seeing how it goes!

Thanks for the tips!

 

This may or may not be helpful to you, but I thought I'd share anyway. It is possible to completely color match/color-correct anything using thin layers of acrylic paint as well. Just as you would using pastel, except you don't have to seal each layer every five seconds. You actually don't have to seal any layers at all, other than the first to prime the surface, and then the last layers of fixative to seal the work. That method is used for painting, color matching or color correcting most other types of customizable toys outside of this hobby. Like 1:6 action figures for example, a lot the head sculpts don't actually match the bodies, and a lot of the bodies don't match anything at all!

They are all just painted to look like they match, due to the nature of the collectibles and due to the type of audience they usually go to. Having said that, it is a very decent way (IMHO), to paint, color match, etc. BJD or any other toy as well. I've been painting some of my 1:6 action figure head sculpts that way for a while now, and also one of my newer and tinier BJD head sculpts and it is pretty freaking nice, if I do say so myself. As a traditional artist, it's something I enjoy more than having to seal every other layer of pigment, being able to paint for as long as I can without worrying about the pigment caking or having to seal again. Having said that, I know a lot of people (within this hobby) would probably not like it. It is a bit of a learning curb, if you're not used to only using paint, water and blending mediums but to me it's more relaxing and gets the job done. In a way faster than pastels, but at the same time probably not -- the acrylic dries faster than most other paints, but the layers are so heavily watered down that it does take a bit longer to build up than straight acrylic. On the plus side, you don't have to seal every layer and you don't smudge anything if you don't work on it immediately the next day or so -- or even longer. Hope that's helpful in some way. Good luck with your project! (:

 

Thank you!

 

There's very little good high pigment pastel color cannot do.

 

Pan Pastel is super pigmented and does wonders! People have used white pan pastel to deyellow their bjd during faceup process.

I can't find the original example post I was thinking of but here is a video of it being applied, the difference is immediate:

panpastel example video

In this video the artist uses first a layer of the light blue to neutralize the yellow resin tone (but keeping a slight palid effect because blue + yellow = green, although the blue here is pretty warm) before adding the white pastel.

Here is also someone who just did it with paint, you can see in the last picture they didn't solely use white but mixed with purple. This is because purple is the complementary colour to yellow, and when complementary colours mix they grey out. The purple helps to create a neutral white over the yellowed resin.

paint example on instagram

 

Have you tried lightly sanding the body? Most of the dolls that I've gotten that are yellowed it's often more the old sealer that's yellowed. If I sand the doll often I find that the resin underneath is much better.

You have to use protection to do this and I usually sand with water so the resin dust doesn't go far. But often a good sand does wonders.

 

@Brytewolf Hi! Late to the party, I know.... but! Have you seen this tutorial?
/tutorials/blushing-parts-to-match-with-pastels.38/
It is about color matching with pastels, not specifically about neutralizing yellowing, but it discusses that problem too and gives great hints about how to successfully use white pastel, and when to use it, and generally about what colors and sealants to use, because, yes, that also makes a difference. It is an older tut but the author is a real BJD DIY pro. I used this a lot, and find it extremely helpful.

Also, if you allow me to say that, I've been at this 20 years now and want to warn you off trying to sand off the yellowed resin. The resin layers underneath the surface are not as dense as the surface, they're microscopically more porous as a result of the pouring and curing process, which means light can penetrate deeper, and sanded dolls for that reason are known to yellow even faster than it happened the first time around with the surface still intact.

Good luck, and have fun!^^

 

No prob, here to serve Yeah, I get that. The sordid truth^^ is that there is currently no method to decrease yellowing in resin that will not somehow also structurally damage the resin (other than covering it up with color). People always say sanding or using something containing oxy bleach, like dental cleaner tablets, but I wonder if they do know that these things always also weaken the plastic they use it on, and normally what occurs is that it will yellow even worse, or even become a bit more brittle in the long run (oxy bleach).