Shadows, Highlights, and Blush

Written by Sara Wagner

Thought I'd share a little about how I have come to blush, shade, and highlight my dolls.

First of all, it will help to understand color dynamics involved with shadows and highlights. Snow, and often times clouds, are great references for understanding shadows and highlights, because they are pure, without any color. So you'd think their shadows and highlights would be in gray scale, right? WRONG! The bright places on them tend to take on a slightly golden hue. A warm gray, perhaps. Meanwhile the shadows tend to take on a bluish or purplish hue.

Lighting has the exact same effect on everything else, including human skin. But because of flesh's coloring, it is a wee bit harder to notice.

Here's what a lot of repainters don't understand: Highlights are pale warm yellows and oranges. Shadows are dark cool blues and purples.

The first big mistake painters make is using white to highlight their dolls (whether on the skin, lips, or irises). It gives the doll's skin a strange hue, the infamous gray lip syndrome, or dull washed out irises.

The second big mistake painters make is shadowing their dolls with overly warm reddish browns. This not only makes the doll look sunburnt, but also the warm colors "jump out" at the viewer, failing to create a shadowing effect at all.

Dark grayish purples and blues work very well for shading. Pale golden yellow works perfectly for highlighting... heck, even pale orange can make a good highlight.

Now for understanding the blushing color. The best advice that can be given for this is: use a spot of flaming orange in your blushing mix. Warm it up! Even if the doll is supposed to be icy and cold, adding a tinge of warmth will make her look alive, instead of like Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (above, left). A doll can look good with pale lips, if her cheeks have a little warmth to them. I think not using enough warmth is probably the number one mistake new doll artists make; there are grayish-faced repaints listed on eBay by the bucket load.

Take a good look at this repainted Mattel MOTM Marissa doll if you will (click on her image for an extremely close pic). The makeup around her eyes actually has some purple in it, but the warm tones in her skin changed the hue. A doll's skin color is supposed to "glow" through the shadowing, blush and highlights like this, altering their color. Also, notice the highlights on her upper lip and eyelids. Those were done with pale warm (orangy) yellow, not white. I probably could have used a cooler color in the creases of her lids, sides of the nose, and under the cheekbones, to add more depth to those features, but as you can see, she works well without extensive shadowing.

And finally, here is a good technique for applying the blushing/shading/highlights (using acrylic paints, of course):

• Mix up your blush/shading/highlight color.
• After you have the perfect color you want, mix your color with a little indoor/outdoor matte varnish (available at Walmart, Hobby Lobby, etc. After years of running around in circles with matte varnishes , I've decided I like DecoArt's DuraClear best for most purposes. Cheap stuff, but the strongest I've ever experimented with). You should have about one part color with one to three parts varnish.
• Now, water this mix down until it's very translucent. It will take a little trial and error before you know how much water to add. Too much, and it will take forever to build your color. Too little, and the color won't have the translucent quality you need; your shading will look "splotchy".
• Get a clean, super-soft brush (for blushing I use a big one, without a point, like a makeup powder brush). Dip it in water. Dry it off, using a paper towel so that it's faintly damp, but not wet.
• Dip the brush in the blush solution. Dry it off on a clean white paper towel, until there's very little paint on the brush. "Powder" the paper towel with the brush just to be sure, until you cannot see anything being left behind by the brush.
• Lightly brush it onto your doll, using either plain soft strokes, or by using a "powdering" motion (careful though; overly zealous "powdering" can remove previous paint, leaving white speckles. I usually only "powder" the cheeks and forehead, using a big brush. Around the eyes and in smaller areas I just do regular washes). At first, you shouldn't see ANY color at all. Building it up to your liking will be a slow process.
• Let each wash dry several minutes, even if it "looks" dry. Otherwise new wet stuff will remove specks of the older stuff, leaving unpainted specks all over the paint job (the doll will look diseased ).
• Wash the brush in the water frequently, repeating steps 4-6. It's important to take care of your "powder" brushes, and not let paint dry on them.
• Be patient. This method takes awhile, and you'll be tempted to add more color to your solution or use a wetter brush... DON'T! Just keep at it.

This method will build up some super even matte (powdery-looking) color that won't need varnish, because essentially, it is varnish... color tainted varnish, that is. The result will be as uniform as a factory blush/shading/highlighting job.

Working on Tonner vinyl, I've found that the soft blush brush doesn't work splendidly like it does on Mattel or Integrity vinyl. The resulting blush job ends up looking brownish and streaky on Tonner dolls... I suspect because their vinyl refracts light a little differently. Instead use a clean makeup sponge when repainting them. Dip it in the paint, squeeze it out, and then dab it on a clean white paper towel before dabbing it across the doll's face.

Hope this helps! (I just finished painting a doll after having forgotten how to do this, and had to re-train myself, so it will certainly help me [remember]! )

Happy Painting!

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