You may have seen pics of this little guy in my Flickr album. He was the third bjd I got my grubby little mitts on and has probably become my favorite bjd so far. He’s a DB Doll tiny; Yuer is the mold.

He’s been faceless for ages now. It’s been a combination of limited time and fear. BJDs are purely self-indulgent for me (although my excuse for buying the first one was to see how the ball-jointing and stringing was done so I could eventually sculpt one, heh) so spending time working on them is my lowest priority. What little time I get to spend actually working in my studio is usually taken up by meeting challenge obligations, finishing up custom orders or trying to come up with new items to list in my various shops.

Bronte new, out of the box and no face up or blushing:

But, to be honest, fear was another factor. Doing a “face up” on a bjd seemed vastly different somehow to painting an art doll. Truth is that there are some differences but many of the main techniques are the same. The real key seems to be illusion, just as it is with art dolls and the motto “less is better.”

Bronte’s face up wasn’t my first on a bjd. The first one I did on another tiny I have, a Dollzone BB Judy. She came out looking extremely embarrassed (red-orange all over) although she wasn’t horrific for a first face up, she was definitely well overdone.

And just to show you what a difference a face up makes, here’s Judy before I did her face and body blushing:

Another bjd enthusiast and friend came over one weekend and we did our first face ups together. Neither of us had any experience with it so it was pretty much the blind leading the blind. And Judy, as seen above, was the result on my part. Not so great but passable.

Judy in one of my favorite poses:

There are a few local bjd collectors and we meet up occasionally. We did a “craft day” earlier this month. Everyone brought dolls (of course) and then we split off and did a variety of things–making a set, sewing, and face ups. I brought Bronte and Zophiel and worked on both heads but Zophiel’s didn’t come out right. Bronte’s, however, came out just fine although I wasn’t initially thrilled with his eyebrows. When I pulled his head out later, after coming home, I thought they might look alright if I finished them up so I did. And, voila! They looked pretty good. So, not too bad of a job for a second face up. Serious props to Natalie/Dybbuk for teaching a few of us how to do face ups at our craft day!