Dyeing What to start with?

Either could work, really. A body that is already tan may have undertones different from the head you have, so you may need to do a bit more correcting in your dye formula to account for that.

 

I would suggest getting the colour closet to what you want. When I've tried dying white dolls dark brown, I had a lot of issues with the colour being very patchy due to the natural marbling of the resin. I think i've heard darker resins colours have to be mixed and cast more carefully to avoid marbling so I would assume the dye absorption would be less patchy?

(If I've understood it correctly, it's a result of how well the resin is mixed and I assume white resin, especially from chinese budget companies, isn't mixed as well as you don't really see the patchy-ness. But when I dyed, the less well mixed parts of the resin soaked up more or less dye resulting in very uneven colour.

The two whites were Dream Valley white and Island Doll white. Island didn't have much marbling issues but I had a couple of pieces turned out different shades as I'm guessing they were cast in different batches. DV was a disaster and had very noticeable marbling/patchy-ness.

Interesting the marbling got less noticeable the darker the brown got. I've also dyed Doll Family pumpkin heads from white to orange and the colour shows the splodges and streaks from the resin texture. I've also dyed several dolls black where you can't see any marbling etc. So it does seems dying to really dark colours has a better result than mid-range colours. Again I'm guessing it's to do with the absorption rate/ dye penetration, the darker patches reached their max and the lighter patches caught up over time?)

Anyway, please correct me if I've got any of that wrong, I'd love to improve my ability to dye dolls and what causes issues!