I was a bit surprised when I got this head since the hair was molded into the resin and the whole thing was just a deathly white. I should have asked the commissioner if it was a tinted resin or not and if the hair was molded in since it is a lot more work to paint in the skin color and the hair. The head was unprepped (ie. had dirt smudge on it's nose). However, since I had already accepted the commission I just considered it a learning experience.
The steps required included
1. Scrubbing the head with a mild detergent. (If you check the BJD commissions page, there is an additional fee but since I did not expect a 1/6 resin head this was not included on the 1/6 commission page...until now.)
2. Priming with a white primer using airbrush. The type of paint is different that what I normally use and is a lot more sturdy and will withstand more rough handling since it is a base coat.
3. Base skin tone and a little shading using airbrush. Again I used an alcohol based acrylic which will withstand more handling than liquitex would.
4. Hand painted the hair using alcohol based acrylic. Several coats required and a little bit of shading done though it doesn't show super well since the colors were very dark.
5. Finally painting the face and adding a little more depth with pastels.
Yeah...it was a ton of work.
Something I discovered while painting her is that because of the way the hair is molded on the right side of her face, it was very difficult to paint her lashes because the hair mold was blocking my brush. This is the reason why a lot of garage kits have the hair as a separate piece so that it is easier to paint. In terms of likeness, the sculpt has fuller lips and a longer face as well as smaller eyes. I find that overall, action figure female faces tend to lean toward a more masculine look and this one is no exception.
Here are a few pictures of Selene for reference.
I had a decision to make whether to make her deathly pale or a more normal skintone. Considering that the blue images were lit and color corrected to make Kate seem paler than she really is I decided to go with a more normal skintone since it is easier to color correct a photo to make the head look pale than to color correct a pale head to make it look more lifelike.
Here are the results:
As you can see the likeness is not bad but her eye are definitely sculpted smaller. I painted her eyeliner on her lower lid a little way from the edge leaving the pink edge of the inner lid showing to help make her eyes look a bit larger.
There was not much to do about the lower face being longer but the likness is still there so it was ok. The lower lip is a fuller shape then the really are and since it was sculpted in it would look odd if I tried to paint it the shape of Kate's so I just let it be. (The philtrum, the groove above the lip is also supposed to be wider in real life but yeah I'm just being nitpicky lol.) I took a gamble with the lip color since the color is different in every reference image. Selene normally has very dry looking lips so I gave her dark lip creases as well as areas of pale dry light lip color. (note the two specks at the top of the lip are not really there.)
I think she came out nicely in the end. Would I paint more casted resin heads? Yeap. I really enjoy painting different sculpts and her eyes were sculpted beautifully so I was happy to paint them. Even though it seems like I am complaining that the likeness isn't perfect, I am not. I am simply stating a fact and I think she looks quite like Kate. Her teeth and lips were really fun to paint as well. Her lower teeth were not moulded in but her upper teeth were.
She has not been approved yet and I am wondering if he wants more distinct painted highlights in her hair. I tend to leave stuff like that to the sculpt but everyone has different preferences so we'll see what he says. I think for me the most stressful thing about faceups is that I'm not sure if the owner will be happy. It is different when I am only painting for myself but even then I'm not always happy with my own work lol.
(NOTE: lol...doing commissions has had me rewrite the commissions info several times. This is not the first time and it is not the last. I received another commission with a surprise in the box that has brought up another redraft of my commissions page. This is just part of the process. I'm still very new to this so one day I think I will have most of my bases covered except for the really obscure things that crop up.)
EDIT: So yes she has been approved! I will be sending her off soon and my fellow sculptor/painter friend looked at the head and pretty much repeated what I said about why it doesn't look like Kate. Sometimes I think I'm too nitpicky so it's good to hear that other ppl think the same thing. To be honest though, it's rare to see a 1/6 head with extreme likenesses except for those from Hot Toys. They do some amaaaaazing work and the paint job is great too.
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