Supplies what kind of color pencil should i used for face up(no oil base)

Hello there!
You don't -have too- use watercolor pencils but regular Prismacolors are usually wax based and there is still a decent chance of permanent staining. Not as bad as with oil, but most doll owners avoid them.

Dolls are more expensive than pencils and it's worth it to use the correct supplies. That doesn't mean you have to go for a whole 120 color set of the fanciest pencils. It's very possible to get really good results from a small set or even a handful of medium quality pencils, acrylic paints, some decent pastels, and lung protections.

AsenvaBJD and Xhanthi on Youtube both have good videos about faceups and supplies. Good research and happy dolling!

 

I'm not too experienced with faceups myself, but I can say that the watercolor pencils are a great tool in that you can easily "erase" any mistakes with a bit of water and a q-tip (or dab with a paper towel) vs. scrubbing an eraser over them...usually colored pencils are pretty tough to erase.

 

I used prismacolor for the lines on my first several years of faceups and they never stained a single one. As long as you are sealing properly they work perfectly well and I would recommend them to anyone who wanted to use regular colored pencils on their faceups.
My advice is for resin dolls though, not vinyl for what that's worth.

 

Watercolor pencils are the best option for three reasons: they are safe, you can easily erase them, and they are pretty hard.
The latter is something all the waxed based, high grade artist coloring pencils are not. But you need the hardness to be able to make crisp, pointy lines. Also, you can of course paint over them with water as well, to reduce the grainy structure.

There are already very small watercolor pencil boxes one can buy, or you can even just buy single pencils. With a black, dark brown, beige, white and red you have already covered pretty much all the colors you might need for natural colored faceups.

As someone else already said, these dolls are way more expensive than a couple pencils are. It makes no sense to cheap out on your materials for a couple bucks extra, when it could mean harming your expensive doll or wasting time/materials struggling to paint a faceup.

 

I am mainly using pastels and watercolor pencils for my face up because i am still learning and cant really control my shaking hand when using tiny brushes. Right now I am using Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer. I heard Derwent Inktense is the best..

 

It's surprising just how little color is actually needed for a face-up. A set of watercolor pencils will last a long time. I use Derwent 24 colors set but if I needed additional colors, I would purchase the single color pencils. This is because for faces, other than fantasy colors, only uses a limited palette. So I would get black and dark brown in single pencils since the eyes and brows are mostly where I use them. Good luck!

 

Echoing others, dolls are expensive and a few new pencils is not as expensive as messing up your doll. Watercolors are the go to because they are safe to use and give great results.
Keep in mind you really don't need a ton of colors to do a faceup. A brown or black for liner and lashes, a red or pink for lip details, a brown for freckles, and some colors to match your wig for the brows. It's easy to feel like you need access to ALL the colors but in reality you maybe need like 10-15 pencils overall.
Most other parts of the face are done with chalk pastels and brushes (blush, eye shadows, highlights/lowlights).
If you're concerned about price, start with a smaller set of maybe 24, or consider another brand, Prisma and Derwent are fantastic, but even some budget brands like Arteza work just as well, especially if you are just getting started. Can always expand your colors, most brands offer single pencils, or upgrade to a higher end later.

 

use decent quality- high quality water color pencils. I personally don't use color pencils for my face ups, as paint brushes are more my cup of tea, but from seeing artists and many hobbyists talk about color pencils, they always suggest water color as its the best.

 

I use Derwent Watercolor pencils. I buy them individually as I only use a few colors for detailing. I have a couple different browns, a black, and a grey for eye details like eyebrows hairs, eye liner. I also have white and a couple different shades of red for highlights and lip lines.

 

Prismacolor also does watercolor pencils. I like them but I've had them stain before, even through sealant, so I wouldn't go crazy with the darker colors until you've already put down several layers of sealant and pastel on the resin. People recommend using watercolor pencils because wax and oils in general can react badly with the sealant and resin over time and cause discoloration.

Semi-related: I used to hate using color pencils for normal art on paper because the wax can make them hard to layer and blend, but now that I have a nice set of watercolor pencils and don't have to deal with bloom everything is much easier. The consequence of this is that I'm burning through my pencil set pretty quickly but if I can actually finish it I'd say it was money well spent.

 

I want to add a bit more on my "you can use normal colored pencils if you want to" perspective after reading some more of the comments. This has been a long standing topic in the bjd customization hobby and through my own experiences I just don't find that the arguments against using prismacolor colored pencils have been valid for the work I've done. Prismacolor are not a super cheap colored pencil and I'd personally recommend them but not other brands as much. I find that they are absolutely hard enough to hold their shape and be used for making lines well. They also have enough pigment to binder to function on the sealed resin. They are not more likely to damage a resin doll than a watercolor pencil in practice. It will always depend when it comes down to the nit picking of which one stains or doesn't with the pigments themselves, their concentration, and the types of binders, but manufactured art supplies have binders in them. You might have a safe material and brand but you find one of their colors actually does stain. Watercolors have binders, watercolor pencils do, colored pencils do too. Not using oil based paints is a matter of potential chemical reaction more than other types of materials which is why they are universally avoided.
Of course your doll is expensive, valuable, precious and you don't want to ruin them by "cheaping out" but your question is normal, can you use what you already have? So my opinion is yes, you could learn with prismacolor. Is it going to be the perfect end product that you keep using forever? No probably not. But I don't think it poses any real threat to harming your resin doll.
The way you can use watercolor pencils vs. Regular on the face will be very different so I think that's the biggest factor in deciding at this point which sounds more appealing to you.

 

Personally I prefer faber castell water color pencil. However I heard Derwent pastel pencil works very well too

 

Derwent water color pencils are my absolute go-to! In my experience, it's the least likely to scratch off any sealant. It lays pigment down with hardly any pressure applied at all. I use pencil sharpener, but also keep sandpaper at the ready for reeaaalllyyy sharp points.

 

Derwent Inktense are a terrible idea. They're ink, like the name says, and will stain.

 

Really?
I had no idea because some people praised them. Maybe because their leads so soft and too pigmented that they will stick too much? I am still on the hunt for the good pigmented one than my faber-castell.

 

I've seen a lot of people praise them because, at a surface level, they behave very much like a watercolor pencil. I own a set, and would only use them on paper, as once they're exposed to moisture they lock in permanently to the surface. Regular Derwent watercolor pencils are fantastic options, though; I also have a set of those that I use for my faceups. They're lovely and, unlike the Inktense line, totally removable.

 

Thank you for the warning
I guess i try their regular one then

 

Do you have any sources for that? As far as I know, they are not ink. They are described as having an "ink-like" effect and intesity, perhaps that is where the misconception comes from?
If I am correctly informed the derwent inktense pencils are a bit like water colour pencils, but with a gouache-like paint instead. They do have a bit of a wax binder, just as water colours does, but I never had any problems with them and plenty of people use them. The main difference is that they are very pigmented and they do not reactivate once they have been wetted and dried, making is possible to build up multiple layers without sealent between, but it also makes them harder to erase if a mistake is made.
The high pigmentation does mean that a good seal underneath is a good idea, but that is no different from any other highly pigmented materials we use such as acrylic paints, pastels or watercolours. They can all potentially stain, if incorrectly used.
Another potential point of caution is that some of their colours does change a lot when wetted, more than watercolours does. Sometimes it's hard to predict based on the colour of the pencil alone, so testing the colours you intend to use before hand is a good idea to make sure they are right for the job.
I've used inktense pencils in my own face ups for close to a decade now and never had them stain anything.

And, if this "ink is bad"-thing is a knee jerk reaction, remembar that some inks are perfectly fine for face ups. There is a discussion thread active here right now about acrylic inks. You shouldn't use any alcohol based inks, obviously, as they may interfere with the sealent, but water based inks that have no addatives that have negative effects can be used quite safely a lot of the time. Just pay attention to the ingredients and pigments used and read up, do tests and see what other people use.

Caution is always a good thing, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

 

@Lilith it's my own personal experience seeing how they penetrate paper when used there; with that behavior, I would never chance them on resin--they behave like ink once moistened and bind very thoroughly with the surface. If you want to take the chance, it's of course up to you. As for the discussion of acrylic inks, while I do hate to argue semantics, "acrylic inks" aren't technically ink; they're acrylic pigment suspended in a highly fluid medium (which is why you need to shake or mix them before using them). True ink is a solution in a vehicle designed to penetrate and bind with the ground; "ink" is often a misnomer used for "very very thin paint." Alcohol ink, which you did mention as bad, is indeed a true ink; acrylic "ink" is just paint. I'd never use a true ink for a faceup.

 

@So, your reson for believing they will dagmage dolls is how they behave on paper? I'm, confused.
As I said, I never had any problems with them and I have used them on several dolls, some of those face ups have been on the dolls for years before removing and I never had any staining. And I did a small test before using them, it's not like I just took a chanse.
That test was a long time ago, though and just a spot test on a head cap and it has long since been wiped so there is nothing to show for it now.

But what I can do is some new tests. I need to wait until the weather clears up, there is the tail end of a spring storm going right now, but next chanse I get, I'll spray some left over parts and set something up.