A Big Face Post

As promised, a post about the new hobby. I had some doll fun this weekend! I started to paint her face and hands. Here is what she looked like when I got her:

I bought gouache watercolors, pastels, and a few more watercolor pencils to supplement the very small collection I already have and went to work giving her a face. I think this was my third take on the freckles:

They finally looked the way I wanted, but I was aiming for something a bit more subtle.

So I left them just as they were, just lightened the darker ones with a touch of water and a small dab of a Q-tip. Ah, the joys of watercolor. :) The freckles took all day, so I was happy to spend Sunday on less difficult stuff and make progress in greater leaps.

This was only my first layer of "pinking" so it's fairly subtle, but maybe you can tell how she's already coming to life a bit with color on her cheeks and lips. All of my photos in inconsistent lighting and different areas of the house at different times of the day certainly don't help, do they? She looks a little sweeter and a little less creepy, eh? :)

And this is as much work as I finished on her yesterday. I probably should have left her alone after the last layer. She looks a little overworked now, but that's okay. It's a learning experience. :) If I hate it, I'll just redo it! All that's left is her eyebrows, another layer of drawn eyelashes, then some gloss and real eyelashes. I've been working on her hands at the same time. I really like how they are turning out.

The best part about the whole thing is that I was productive with school stuff in between steps! I have to wait an hour between layers for the sealant to dry, which means I absolutely cannot work on it for an hour. An hour for school work is pretty much the limit of my attention span for intellectual work, so everything is working precisely as I planned, muahaha! School is hard, guys. That's why I knit so much. ;)