Let’s paint up a Dollfie Plus! These 27cm dolls can be similarly made-up just like Dollfie Dream and Super Dollfie because of their included heads. Dollfie Plus feature open-eye holes for use with the 8mm and 10mm acrylic eyes. EB-Beauty A, B and S also feature open-eye holes, as well as Takeru and Yamato. The plastic used for the EB heads is not the same as what is used for the DP and WTG Boy heads, and will be harder to modify. However, you won’t need to trim any excess pieces from them at least!
So of course, you’ll be needing a DP body and head. For this tutorial I’m using a Dollfie Plus 01 – Tan Skin. You’ll also need a brush, acrylic paint, Paper Palette or a dish to mix paints, water and some paper towels kept on hand. You also might need a model/X-acto Knife (which I forgot to picture because I’m smart), pastels and a piece of sand paper (if you want to do some softer make-up work), ZM Finishing Powder Spray to seal your doll’s make-up, and a Phillip’s Screwdriver- preferably with a small head.
So let’s take that head out and get a good look at it. You’ll notice that it’s a little rough around the edges. In particular you’ll want to be smoothing the area around the eye holes out. This is where the handy modeling knife comes in.
Very carefully trim the extra plastic from around the edges of the eye holes. Don’t cut too deeply or press too hard because you can potentially change the shape and size of the eyes. That’s all you really have to worry about, but otherwise you can go ahead and trim the extra pieces that might stick out on the rim of the head and on the back of it. Make sure you clean away all plastic shavings, otherwise you’ll find pieces pop up here and there and get in the way of your painting.
Now we can start on painting! Since the DP head has eyes and brows all placed for you, you don’t really need to worry about marking out things with a Make Pen (I don’t even know why that’s shown in the picture up there 9_9;). So let’s go right into mixing paints!
You don’t need a whole lot, and nor do you need very many colors. I like sticking to neutral tones and generally start with a bit of flesh tone or beige, brown, a tiiiny bit of black, and some paint thinner. Black by itself is a strong color, so I use it to tint colors rather than use colors straight out of the bottle.
So, once you have a suitable color mixed, you can start going around the edge of the eye with your brush. This is where you begin to define the look of your Dollfie. You can go thin or thick for eyeliner, and then move into doing lashes. Eyelashes aren’t too difficult so long as you have a decent-sized brush and a smooth flow of paint. A little bit of paint thinner helps to keep your paint from drying out too fast. Test out a few strokes on the Paper Palette to check the range of line thicknesses.
Find a comfortable position to work for lashes. The brush strokes are quick and light, and only need minimal movement of your hand. Be careful because these can easily get too thick due to the small workspace you have, unless of course, you’re going for a thick-lashed look!
Once that’s done, you can move on to doing the eyelid lines. These are marked, so you can just trace the lines with paint. Since I’m working with a tan skin model, I want to match the skin tone a little so I added some orange to my palette.
If you’re not too sure about how the color will look once you apply it, you can test it out on the inside of the doll’s head to see. Don’t use too much paint, and don’t go too thick. While we’re at it, you can also do the eyebrows, which are also marked. They’re not carved into the skin, but are slightly raised, so trace these carefully. I suppose if you’re really ambitious, you can carefully trim away the brow lines if you were looking for a different placement of said brows. Not something I’d recommend for beginners, and since I haven’t tried it myself, I don’t know how well it would actually work.
Now we’ll tackle the mouth. If you look reeeeally closely at your DP head, you might find that it has slightly parted lips. If you’re so inclined to do so, you can paint in teeth. Doesn’t require much paint, just a tiny tip of white on your brush. Try not to let it spread out too much, but you can always wipe away any excess with a bit of paint thinner. Next are the lips and the smile lines. I was going for a more natural shade for her lips here, so it’s kind of hard to see. If you want to emphasize your doll’s smile, you can use the same shade of color you used for the eyelid lines, and very carefully extend the corner lines of the mouth. You don’t need to make it all that long. If you’re crazy and want to experiment like I did, you can even try adding in some tiiiiiny tiny lip lines, but since this isn’t an SD, those lines are going to have to be really thin.
So we got that covered? Good! Next is one of my favorite parts- using pastels. Paints just don’t give that much dimension to the doll’s face, unless of course you got an airbrush handy, but that’s going to be some real detail work there. With pastels you can make something like powdered make-up. Rub the pastels on a piece of sandpaper until you have enough pigment to work with. If you don’t have any extra brushes, cotton swabs work nicely. After getting some of the powder onto the tip of the swab, test it out on a piece of paper to get rid of any excess before you apply it to your DP head. Start light- it’s easier to build up color than it is to take away. I added a light blush to the cheeks, tinted the inner ears and added a bit of shading to the edge of the forehead, behind the ears, below the chin, under and very lightly on either side of the bridge of the nose. I also used the thin brush to add a touch of shading to the inside of the lips.
Once you’re satisfied with your doll’s make-up, you can seal it with the Finishing Powder Spray. Please spray outside, or where it’s well-ventilated! Here, you can see the pastel coloring a little better with this shot I took outside after spraying.
Once the spray has dried, you can add a little gloss to the lips and whatever else you want to make shiny. Here’s where you can add some Shine Pearl too.
…so she’s got the make-up! She’s got the gloss! But we’re not through yet! What, did you think we’d leave her with gaping eye sockets? Of course not!
Pick your eyeballs! Remember, for 27cm dolls you’re looking at the 8mm or 10mm acrylic eyes. Animetic eyes will be way too big, and 6mm and Micro are only for the guys. Yeah, they’re picky about their eyeballs too. Once you’ve gotten things picked out, here comes the annoying fun part. You’ll need some masking tape or Eye Putty. Also, not necessary, but extremely handy for the size of the eyes you’re dealing with, a pair of tweezers.
First get a tiny bit of putty or if you can manage to make it stick to the inside of the head and not your own fingers, a little piece of masking tape. You’re going to place this at the base of the eye socket on the inside of the head. This will help you to hold the eye in place so you can position it. With the tweezers, or if you have leeeettle fingers, you can insert the eye. Check from the front to see what direction you have the pupil facing. You can adjust to your preference.
Now here’s the tricky part, getting those eyes to stay in the right direction when you secure them. You get a nice wad of Eye Putty and after you’ve softened it up kneading it between your fingers, you wanna push it over the eye so that it presses it firmly into place. Mind you, this will also possibly cause the eyes to shift, so you might need to adjust them again…
…which is why after repeatedly doing this I decided to just hot glue them in. Of course, I’m sure you can do so and make it look much neater than I did!
Once you have your eyes in place, you can stick the head on the rest of your doll. With DP heads, it’s simple to do. Put the head on over the neck piece with the head turned sideways so that the notch will fit through the hole. Then turn the head to face frontwards, which will effectively lock the head in place.
Still not done yet! You have to stick that head cap on. Make sure it’s positioned correctly, notch matching the inside of the head. The screw hole will be at the top. Hopefully you didn’t lose the little screw that’s taped to the packaging of the spare pieces that came with your Dollfie! Carefully insert that into the hole. You’ll need to screw it in with a Phillip’s screwdriver, the smaller head, the better. Don’t worry if the screw pushes the head pieces apart- the more you screw it in, the tighter it will get so the pieces will be pushed snugly together again.
And here she is! We’re almost done! Poor girl needs some hair!
Pittato Wig is your best friend. It only takes a few small pieces. Stick these to the top front and sides of the head. This will keep the DP Wigs from slipping, even if some of them might seem to fit pretty snug. When you put the wig on, start from the front, stretching out the wig just a little before you hold the front in place with a finger. Pull the rest back and over the head.
Find this girl some clothes and you’re done! I think she stole Yamato’s shirt. …. WELL that’s all there is to it! Have fun, don’t be afraid to try some different things with your doll’s make-up, and sorry for eating up your bandwidth!! >_</
Tags: Tutorials
