Dollieh Sanctuary

Hi everyone! I would like to share with you my first accomplishment/foray into the BJD world... Finishing up customizing my Hujoo Berry! I would love any feedback and advice, or even pictures of your own Hujoo Berries.. I'm just very excited

PICS:
So I don't have a good camera. I took these with one of those durable waterproof shockproof dustproof cameras.. but the thing bugs out a lot, and are really just best for bright lit nature scenes (or dunking one's head under water x'D). So I apologize for the photo quality.. I do hope to get a better camera and also improve in photographing dolls!


"Hey, are you talking about me up there?"

Yyyup! Here are two picture-sets of her sitting; not any proper scenery or meaning, just to show her more fully:




She's holding some cheapie cake erasers I found, which are adorable! Very affordable miniatures that I think fit her size sorta (she's not exactly normally proportioned x'D soooo...)

She's also wearing some Cutie Pops clothing, also pretty cheapie. I read somewhere that they fit Hujoo, so I ordered them... but they must've meant some other sculpt, cos the velcro barely reaches around! Funnily enough, I ended up sanding her nips down, because it was awkward seeing them stick out from her too-tight dress top

Boy, did I struggle with the wig. Bangs were too long initially, I lazily chopped around and just jumped into doing it without doing any planning research. Thankfully, it ended up NOT too bad.. but only after I consulted a nice wig-bangs trimming tutorial, which taught me to vertical-cut to make the bangs-line less harsh.

NOW, about the face-up. EVEN MORE STRUGGLES! My first mistake was using non-topbrand soft pastels, ON TAN SKIN. I used Loew Cornell set of 64 half pastels, which was pretty cheap and gave a wide variety of colors. But MAN, I had to do SO many layers for the eyeshadow to even remotely show up... and its still not very vivid (but maybe subtle is better). I think it'll do better on white skin; I'm currently attempting to faceup a white-skin monster high doll, and the pastels show up pretty vivid there. HOWEVER, on this tan Berry, I was literally SLATHERING so much pastel all over and over... at the end of everything, I used a whole can of MSC on her O_O Idk what I did wrong.. I DID coat her body too, intending to do blushing, but soon gave up on that (hurray for rage-quit).

My tendency to slather on the pastel also proved to be my first flaw/critique I have for myself: ALWAYS ERASE/CLEAN UP AFTER THE BLUSHING! I didn't even realize it till after so many layers, but looking around her mouth, you can see so much red all over the place... I do regret not cleaning her up there, but she looks okay enough for now, I think x'D.

I also used some Derwent watercolor pencils (after I stupidly forgot I had some PRISMACOLOR ones in the closet, with even more colors!), and those were good. But UGH, I hated Acrylic. How are you supposed to erase a mistake with acrylic.. that stuff doesn't come off without wiping off the entire face! In the end, the final faceup has NO acrylic paint on it.

What I really loved was using some old gouache I had from a decade ago. I was able to thicken it to give that very dark cat-eye liner on her (I wanted to sort of re-shape her eyes), and was able to fine-tune and fix mistakes just by adding water! I also added better color on her lips with the gouache, but I think overall too many layers went into her lips maybe.. I gotta learn to simplify! The layers of gouache did help with the blonde eyebrows, I think, in getting them looking like hair and getting them the right shade.

SO.... any critique, feedback, advice, sharing of experiences, ALL VERY WELCOME! Oh, and any suggestions for a name for her is also welcome x'D I don't have any deep story in mind for her, just a cutesy-dressed girl surrounded by candy and cakes!

I think she looks cute! And I think the layers have worked. I'd be tempted to add a few slightly darker hairs to eyebrows to add a bit more contrast, but that's my personal preference and they look fine as they are also.

Paint wise - I mentioned this on another thread - I prefer using watercolour for the paints. Moisten the pan a few minutes before, then use quite a dry brush to remove the colour so it's not too loaded and is a bit sticky in consistency. I find that way it adheres better and if the particular pigment is prone to any kind of granulation it minimises it.

Name wise, the first thing that sprung into my mind, before I'd read below the pictures, was Candy (shortly followed, unfortunately, by an earworm of the song Candy Girl (please have a high pitched, New Edition youtube vid...)

ShortNCuddlyAm wrote:I think she looks cute! And I think the layers have worked. I'd be tempted to add a few slightly darker hairs to eyebrows to add a bit more contrast, but that's my personal preference and they look fine as they are also.

Paint wise - I mentioned this on another thread - I prefer using watercolour for the paints. Moisten the pan a few minutes before, then use quite a dry brush to remove the colour so it's not too loaded and is a bit sticky in consistency. I find that way it adheres better and if the particular pigment is prone to any kind of granulation it minimises it.

Name wise, the first thing that sprung into my mind, before I'd read below the pictures, was Candy (shortly followed, unfortunately, by an earworm of the song Candy Girl (please have a high pitched, New Edition youtube vid...)

Thanks for the feedback and advice, really appreciate it !!!

Yah, originally the eyebrows were done with darker color pencil, but then I layered lots of light gouache ontop of it to give her really light eyebrows, as if she were a natural blond x'D. Of course, her eyelashes are black.. I'll just blame mascara for that one . I like the idea of darker shade hairs though, I may attempt practicing them on the next faceups I do.

Hm! I do think I have some watercolors somewhere, so I might try it to compare with the gouache. But really, I'm loving the gouche; can have it thick, like acrylic, or thin like watercolor.. but with the ease of fixing/removal of watercolor! Plus, the fact that gouache has white (where watercolors dont, as far as I understand) helps me get the right shade with my n00b mixing skills.

And yeah x'D I was the same when thinking name.. "Candy? Maybe I'll just call her cake." I thought maybe she could be something like "Candace" with Candy as nickname, but she doesn't look like a 'candace' to me... so I'm still searching u_u.

*has been playing that youtube link in background while writing this response* ^w^ how have I not heard this song before

She's lovely! (Hah my photography "skills" are horrific and I don't have a glitchy camera as an excuse!) I didn't notice any excess blush until you pointed it out either!

Hrmm sadly I fail at names - it usually takes me ages to come up with stuff - so I'll leave that for people better suited to it!

And ...wha?? That was your first faceup??? Wow! In that case I can't wait to see what happens when you've painted a few more!

Really lovely! The sharp lines and scifish vibe on style give nive contrast to pastels she's wearing.

For first face up this is amazing! Just waiting to see what you can do later! ^^

Hello there bionicandy! Ah, one thing I love is faceup shots, and the only thing I love more than that is an artist who wants feedback on them! <3

Pictures: Quick note before I concrit and comment, until you get a digital camera (I do believe they sell some for like $60 at places like Best Buy? ) personally I would suggest using the flash, or whatever method you used in the second picture (I can't tell if that is flash or a light setup, sorry! ). Even though I know it "washes out" the colours a bit, I think it still gives a truer representation of the colours of your doll.

First impression, I'll admit I thought "there is no way this is their first faceup!". The style is just incredibly polished. Hujoo Berry BJDs always remind me of Pullip/Blythe dolls, and this faceup is definitely reminiscent of the style you see on many professional faceups done for those dolls as well. I adore the way you subtly changed the eye shape without the use of a dremel. I adore modification on dolls but this is a great example of how to change a doll's look and still keep the core sculpt intact.

I admit I had a good laugh reading your post. Successful faceups are all well and good but the mistakes are often funnier! Thank you for sharing.

For acrylic...acrylic takes time to master. It helps if you have prior experience with the craft-store kind so you know the basics of how to layer and blend, but yes, they are definitely a pain if you're not used to them! (And even when you are!)

I definitely agree with ShortNCuddlyAm about adding darker eyebrow hairs. Natural blondes, their eyebrows are usually a shade or two darker than their hair. While that effect often looks slightly funny on dolls, adding a few darker hairs is a good way to compensate and bridge the gap. It gives the eyebrows depth without sacrificing the base colour layer.

My one mention would have to be the lips. They're a little...dark? Delineated? I'm not sure what the exact word is I want to use here, but the lips are almost a little too defined. I thought at first that they were painted with a flat acrylic base layer. I think it may be a product of your 1,000 layer adventure. The secondary darker colour is popping out a bit. I think with getting some better pastels and blending/tapering the layers to nothing towards the outer edge of the lips that it would look a bit more natural (...well, natural for a faceup).

Overall this faceup is stunning, and I cannot wait to see more from you! In fact...get to work!

One last thing: The name! Hmnn, that's hard since names for our BJDs tend to either be a) intensely personal or b) "Yeah I totally heard it this one time and needed to use it". To me she definitely has that bubbly quality going on. Basically...anything you could hear at a strip bar. Trisha, Cammie, something like that. I'm sorry for the strip bar reference, but it is true! They make good BJD names!

@Vetinari and she_flame: Eheehee, thank you so much for the compliments! I'll try my best to keep improving, and its good to hear that I'm starting off pretty okay for a first faceup !

@MeltedCaramel: Whoooo more feedback! I reaallly appreciate the time you took to offer all that <3

About the camera: Sadly enough, these pictures were taken on a digital camera, but the camera was meant more for outdoorsy/underwater shots, and has pitiful zoom... plus it freezes and bugs out half the time. So yes, I do hope to get a new and improved one soon! And yes, the brighter pictures were with flash, though I do think buying a good lighting fixture would help with my current crap camera. I offered pictures of both flash and no-flash as the no-flash better captured what it looked like to the naked eye sorta, but the flash was totally necessary to show the details of the doll. So in the future, I'll try to go for a better lit place so that I don't have to rely on over-shiny flash : D

And ehee x'''DDD thank you for the praise, I'm still all teeheeing about the feedback! I know a little about makeup, and I tend to have 'sad' eyes, which ain't bad all the time... but when I want to look sharper, I bust out with the cat-eye liner to bring up the shape of my eyes to be a bit more mischievous >:3... and so I did the same with this Hujoo's! I've always found it fascinating how people can 'mod' sculpts just through the makeup, because that's what people do on real life faces also! Think about all those 'makeup transformation' videos... they ain't applying any face putty, just contouring in difference places!

About the lips... yes, the 1000 layer adventure is DEFINITELY to blame there. I was going for her wearing a bright pastel lipstick rather than making it her natural lip color, though going natural may have been better. As for the dark, I struggled to get the crack between her lips dark (so they don't shine where there's shadow) while also having that dark taper out naturally to the light lipstick color... after tweaking here and there for eternity, I rage quit and that is why it looks a bit like how she just ate a dark cherry popsicle while wearing lipliner x'D;;. I'm having trouble going simple with lips, because when I draw lips I usually do lots of lines and detail (I'm a sketchy person), but on a face where you want attention spread across all details, I'm learning that ultra-delineated lips aren't the way to go uwu. Already, on the Monster-High faceup I'm working on, she's got some serious dark lipstick going on... it started out very nice and simple, and I overtweaked once more : (. Ah, well.. maybe I'll do simple lips right the third time :')

LOL as for the names.. that's what I was thinking too. All I could think of were stripper-esque saccharine-sweet names. None of them are quite sticking well enough yet, so I'll have to keep thinking... xD;

To all, a question about the eyebrows though... I hear you about the few dark hairs of eyebrow in the light-hair eyebrow, but for future reference.. what about dark-haired eyebrows? I look at my own and they're a uniform color.. is it still important to have a few darker-or-lighter colors in there?

I can't give much advice, but I think she looks great. If this is your first try I'm impressed! Maybe a few darker hairs to make the eyebrows more three-dimensional might be a good idea (remember all hairs wouldn't lie flat in a single plane), but either way I really the look of those very light eyebrows over the darker pastel colors. It gives her a slightly otherworldly look, I guess? The cat's eyes help with the eye shape a bit, but also make her eyelashes look fuller (is that the point of that style eyeline? I'm no good with makeup either).

She's so precious! The wig and eyebrows go together very nicely, and the makeup is adorable! Though I'm biased when it comes to Hujoos, lol!

Wonderful! She looks great. I really like her face-up and rainbow wig.