A Wordy Face-Up Tutorial

Introduction
Hi, I'm Chien, and I've been doing face-ups for roughly a year (in fact, this is my first one!). I've still got a lot to learn, and I definitely need to continue working on my technique, but I figured making a tutorial would help others.

Face-ups are great fun, though they can be rather time consuming. Nevertheless, it's totally beneficial to yourself to learn how to do face-ups. For one, you'll know how to fix a face-up if it ever gets damaged. For two, you don't have to send them off to someone else to paint (which is fine, but it's not guranteed that they'll get it right since everyone has their own vision). When you send a doll off to a face-up artist, you have to pay for shipping and spend a good amount of time waiting, too. Having your doll in the post is quite nerve-racking! There are many other reasons to learn how to face-up, but they depend on the person.

It takes a long time to get good at face-ups, unless you have some kind of special knack for it. So don't feel discouraged if your first one is terrifying! Keep working at it, and try new techniques.

My Material List
Zoukeimura Acrylics
Zoukeimura Medium
Zoukeimura NY-01 Brush
Zoukeimura Powder Spray w/ UV-Cut
Zoukeimura Pastels
Rembrandt Pastels
Liquitex Gloss Medium & Varnish
Soft Make-up Brush
Q-Tips w/ Plastic Wands
Keanded Eraser
Painter's Tape
Junk Brushes
MASK!

You may substitute your acrylics, medium, and gloss with your preferred brand. The reason why I have so much Zoukeimura stuff is because I get most of my face-up materials at the Volks store near LA. You can use soft brushes instead of a make-up brush. You need q-tips with plastic wands, because the ones with paper wands might get mushy after a few minutes or they might bend when you're pressing down really hard. Junk brushes are for mixing paint and applying gloss. In place of Zoukeimura Powder Spray, you can also use Mr. Super Clear (preferred brand by many), or Testors Dull Cote/Model Masters Lusterless.

A MASK IS ESSENTIAL WHEN COATING YOUR DOLL. Don't get a cheap dust mask, get a proper one for the sake of your health. The gas from the sealer is very, very bad for you. Wear long-sleeves when you spray. I'm guilty of forgetting to do this. If you're really cheap, at least wet some cloth and hold it over your mouth. Just... be careful. This is dangerous stuff.

o1. First, prep your doll head. Scrub it clean with some water and dry it. A lot of people let their doll heads air dry, but I'm too impatient for that. I use an old towel-- so old that the fibers don't come off when you use it-- and wipe the head clean, then let the remaining parts that I can't get to (such as the eyelid crease or ears) air dry. Sometimes I use a q-tip to dab it out, but that might leave fibers.

After that, you coat your doll with two or three coats of sealer. Do this outside on a mild day with no wind. Follow the instructions on the can! The way I coat is I stick the head on a paintbrush/plastic fork and move the can and head while I spray light coats. When the head is a little shiny with coating, I wait for it to dry (takes about ten seconds), and spray another coat. I do these light coats about seven times, or until the doll isn't shiny (as in its resin was already smooth and buffed). Then I set it down and let it fully dry for ten minutes or more.

o2. Now take out your pastels. The Zoukeimura pastels are somehow softer than my Rembrandt pastels, so all I need to do is open the case.

For the Rembrandts, I take out the color I need and shave off some fine dust with an exacto knife. It's best to shave extra for now, because you don't want to get your fingers dirty later.

Or, if I'm feeling particularly lazy or don't need a very saturated color, I can just brush it off directly with the make-up brush or q-tips. In fact, this is exactly what I do with the Zoukeimura pastels since they're softer.

o3. With a q-tip, I press it on the surface until the color stays, and then soften it with the same q-tip by moving it back and forth. If I use a make-up brush, I brush it onto the surface. It's light at first, but it eventually builds up to a nice color. If you make any mistakes with blushing, tap it off with the kneaded erase. If it still won't come off, you may have to remove either all the blushing with a Mr. Clean magic eraser or the entire face-up with brush cleaner.

o4. Tips on applying color: tilt the head back when blushing the lips so that the pastel will drop into the lip crease and fill in more evenly. Blush the eyes the same way you would apply make-up to your own-- soft half-moons. The pastel can only get so dark, so every now and then you'll need to spray another coat of sealer. When you do that, make sure that the doll head is clean and that there's no pastel fingerprints on the face from when you were rotating the head in your hands. Remember, after you seal it you can't touch it!

This is how my first layer of blushing looked. After this layer, I coated the head because the colors weren't getting any darker. The face is done with a reddish brown that I mixed, and the lips are the same color but with more red.

This is how my second layer of blushing looked. I used the same colors, but they're more saturated now that there's two layers of them. I coated the head again so I can add another layer of blushing.

This is how my third and final layer of blushing looked. This time, I used darker colors to add dimension to the eyes and lips. I used black, dark brown, and pink for the eyes, and used the dark brown on the lips. Then, I coated the head to seal in all the blushing when I was absolutely sure that I was done.

o5. Acrylics!

I blended black and brown to get a nice, base color that I'll use for the entire face. Since Tim is supposed to have black hair (he's blonde in the photos because I don't have the proper wig), my color scheme was darker. I used a generous amount of medium to make the colors nice and translucent. This is the key to doing soft-looking eyelashes. If the color is opaque, it'll stand out to much. If it's translucent, it'll be a mix of the skin tone and color, and thus appear softer on the face. If you WANT it to look dark and done with make-up, you should still avoid using opaque paint to do so. It'll look painted on because, well, it was painted on! Either build up small layers of the translucent paint, or use less medium to think it out.

My brush.

I spent a long, long time looking for a brush I liked. This brush isn't teeny tiny and hair-thin, but I've learned to control it over time. Everyone has different preferences, though. I do have a smaller brush-- 20/0 spotter-- but I prefer this because I can make a variety of brush strokes with it.

o6. The way I paint the lines nice and pointy is by lifting my brush upwards after I'm done with the line. Do whatever feels best for you. If you're new to painting, it's understandable if you start out with a shaky hand. Eventually you gain the right control to make precise lines. Brushwork is the most challenging aspect of a face-up to many people, but to me it's the easiest and most fun part. Blushing is hard for me!

Oh, by the by, I decided I didn't like the blushing on Tim's face and redid it about... four times. This is the one I settled on. Annnyways! Using the translucent paint I mixed, I start with the first layer of color. Basic eyelashes are done by making straight lines along the curve of the lower lid. I like doing slightly curved, uneven eyelashes. They look more natural to me than ruler-straight, evenly spaced eyelashes. Same goes for the eyebrows-- I enjoy doing eyebrows with soft, curling lines that are quite long. The eyebrows I do tend to look bushy and thicker than most face-up artist's. Many people use short, thin strokes that are spaced far apart. The hairs I draw tend to be clumped closer together. The placement of the eyebrow should generally be on the brow line, but this can be adjusted for an effect. Higher eyebrows for an awake look, and lower eyebrows for a broody look.

Tim's brows are darker on the far end and lighter near the bridge of the nose. The color I'm using for both the eyelashes and eyebrows are the same, but due to the nature of the translucent paint they look like different shades because of the blushing underneath.

o7. I added black to my paints to make them darker. Then I went over my lines to add dimension and to slowly build the eyebrows up to their real color (dark brown instead of the dark blonde they were with the first layer of color). I darkened the lower lashes with the darker color too.

The lines criss-cross for a more natural look. A lot of people have trouble making the eyebrows match. I find it's a lot easier to make the eyebrows match by turning the head upside down and viewing it objectively. Also, I lined the upper rim of the eyes with opaque dark, dark brown paint. If you want to make the eyes look bigger, paint onto the eyelids for a very heavy eyeliner look. Based on the shape you painted, you can make the eyes look larger and/or rounder. I do this a lot to change the expressions on a doll, but this time I did not do that on Tim. Sometimes I'll line the lower rim of the eyes with a fleshy pink-- either opaque or translucent-- for a fresher look. Sometimes I will add eyeliner to the edge of the lower rim, too. But that all depends on the face-up.

o8. My goodness! This a terribly unflattering picture of the lip lines. Usually I do my lip lines with an extremely translucent brick-red to make the lips more supple, but this time I opted for white line lip creases to make the lips less severe. I did this with a cream color and a decent amount of medium to make it translucent but not too translucent. I flipped the head upside down to do the lines on the upper lip. I also extended the mouth into a more obvious smile with the same paint I used for the eyebrows.

o9. After everything has dried, I dab a q-tip in black pastel, pinch its tip to be pointier, and shade the eyebrows and eyelashes darker. If this was a doll with brown hair, I would've used a dark brown. If this was a doll with lighter-colored hair, I would'ved used a peach or light brown. This is actually a risky step, since the paint could chip off from the rubbing. It would be safe to coat your brushwork with sealer before you start fiercely rubbing pastel onto it. Note: While I was adding the color to the brows, I also darkened his eyelids in an unnatural way for a stylized effect that looks cool.

1o. Ah, glossing. I use junk brushes to gloss with. I tilt the bottle over and remove the cap, and then use the gloss from the cap only. This prevents me from using huge amoungs of gloss.

Glossing is actually an optional step, but to me it makes the dolls look more alive. Some dolls look better without, though! I typically only use one layer of gloss, but if it's for a feminine doll, I will use two or three layers of gloss for a lacquered look. Typically, people blush the upper and lower rims of the eyes with a little overlap onto the eyelashes and the eyelid. Sometimes I'll blush the entire eyelid for a shiny look. If the doll has no eyelid crease, glossing where the eyelid should be helps define the face. This also works for the lips, too. Glossing the lips defines the edge of the lips, and some people use this to their advantage by painting outside of the lip and then glossing the excess to pull the look together.

If you mess up on glossing, remove it while it's still wet with Mr. Clean magic eraser. If you wipe it off with just water or your fingers, it'll leave a slightly shiny spot and that's not good. So definitely use the magic eraser.

1o. The way I apply eyeashes is a modified version of Helene's, except I keep the tape in and use painter's tape. The reason why I do that is if I remove the tape carefully enough, the eyelashes are entirely reusable. Usually, if you take the eyelashes out if they're glued in, this ruins them. I'm stingy and reuse eyelashes until they're impossible to reuse. Eyelashes are also optional, though. Some dolls look better without them.

The gloss will look milky until it's dried. After that, just pop the eyes back in and put the head on a body (if you have one) and you're done!

Thanks for reading. Good luck and have fun with it!

Ty & Chien ||

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