I love to put different hair locks to a doll face so much during the process of painting it – it allows me to look at the conceived doll from a different angle and to “polish” the details of her image, and it captivates me so much that I can spend much time at this activity!

For the beginning – an enigma image: let your imagination fly!

Fantasize a bit, what this new Dea Vivente is going to look like? Probably, she will stay like this, but maybe you will not recognize her when she is a heroine of new photographs.

Right now I’ll show you the results of high firing – the doll’s parts put together. The new porcelain that the girls are cast from is beautiful flesh toned, shining a bit and even shimmering. I’m glad that Dea Vivente are going to become even better.

I like the look of fired porcelain – this is yet the “blank canvas” meant for picturing a painting.

And now some words about painting.
In doll sphere, toning the parts of body is called “blushing”, and this is what I’m doing in the following photo.

Blushing helps a doll to acquire a living and real-like look, since the body gets shadows, all its volumes are highlighted, in this case the look of human skin is imitated. It is important that the transitions of tones should be smooth and seamless, that’s why I must be careful to the “spots” to be well stumped.

I always love the transformation of a blank doll into a painted one. And I’m pleased with perception of a doll getting closer to life! The two following photographs illustrate it – this is how feet look like before the painting and after it.

Also, a careful reader will notice that the joints in ankles have been revised and now the feet look more natural.

The following photo shows the work on painting the first layer of a face in progress. At this stage I outline overall features and paint the details that are going to be refined in the following layers, each of those are fixed via firing in a kiln.

Painting a face is the most difficult and crucial, at the same time, the most interesting process for me in the work with paints, because then an unborn doll “opens” her eyes, finds her face, her expression and overall mood depends entirely on my hand’s movements. Layer by layer, a doll’s face becomes animate, and for that I need to work carefully on 3-4 layers.