I'm shockingly bad at maintaining my blog. I think that one of the main obstacles with this is because if I do anything that requires regularity, I start to view it more as a chore rather than one that I find fun. Another reason why I may not blog as regularly as I like is because my time is spread out over the internet at various sites. There are the usual haunts--Dolly Market, Blythe Kingdom, Den of Angels. And other time-suckers such as ebay and etsy. I also periodically check facebook for new posts and I also have to catch up with Flickr, ipernity, Tumblr and Twitter. I'm one of the few people who STILL does e-mail. In addition to all this, I'm currently taking an online course through my public library & Gale Education about becoming more assertive. Yes, it's true--sometimes I can be a real doormat; but I think a lot of that can be attributed to my culture and upbringing (Japanese-American), but that's a whole 'nother blog entry.
Today I'd like to show you one of the projects I've been working on for weeks. It was my intention to take in-progress photos as they happened, and put them here and on various photo websites. But that just never happened. Sometimes I just couldn't find my camera, and other times, I just plain forgot. I'd get caught up in working and if I stopped for photo-taking, I probably would have lost creative momentum.
Anyway, some background--I began wanting a Yeolume of my own ever since PODO was first released. This feeling intensified when I got to host Penny the Traveling Yeolume in April. I shopped around and when I found another collector getting rid of her Yeolume PODO for $60 shipped (even to Hawaii!), I pounced. There are a number of things that I didn't especially like about PODO when I saw her in person. I thought her lips were too pursed, for one thing. I wanted her to be more of a happy girl.
Here's my one and only "in-progress" photo!
And here's Beni all put together again.
By no stretch of the imagination is her face-up in anyway perfect. It's decent, sure--and for now it suits her fine. Maybe later, depending how the face-up is holding up, and if I can find a face-up artist within my budget with open slots, then I would consider sending her out for a new, professionally done face-up. There are some areas that just don't seem as crisp and clear as the face-ups I've commissioned others for.
For the face-up, the supplies I used were: Faber-Castell pastels, acrylic paint thinned out with water, and Prismacolor watercolor pencils. The sealant I used was Volks Zoukei-Mura powder spray. I used these insanely tiny brushes for her eyebrows and lashes. And Tamiya gloss for her lips. Looking at these photos, I think what I need to do is spray-matte her one more time with the ZM spray, and then give her lips another coat of gloss. I want those lips to really shine.
This is pretty much the first face-up I did which I'm mostly satisfied with. I think that I could get better with practice, but I don't have a whole lot of blank heads to practice on. And no, the answer to that dilemma is not to buy more dolls.
That is good that you are trying. It's more than I'm doing. I hope they come out with more MIO dolls because that is a great way to be creative without spending too much money. Being creative is always a good thing.
ReplyDeleteThat class sounds interesting. I think if you did a post about that and your upbringing and how it's come together it would be good. How people came to be who they are is important as is learning to be better. I hope it is going well.
Thank you for the comment, blukat. I also would love to see more MIO dolls, especially in darker skin tones; and MIO kits of the entire line-up, not just Pullip. I ended up wiping the face-up I did; too much of it started bothering me. I find that I do that a lot--instead of focusing on what I like about various things, I let the stuff that I don't like just bother me to no end. But even though I wiped the Beni's face-up, I re-did it. As soon as I get decent lighting, I'll be sure to get an updated photo of it.
DeleteThanks also for the future blog post idea. I definitely will write about my class and its effect on me when it's over. The class is going OK, but there is only so much that one can learn from an online setting. I think this topic is much better presented face-to-face in a traditional classroom setting. So many nuances of assertive behavior training is lost online--tone & volume of voice, facial expression, body language. But then again, if this class had regularly scheduled meeting times, it's more than likely I wouldn't have enrolled anyway.