This is the first of 4 planned presentations of work throughout the coming year featuring various artists. The face-up artists whose work is displayed here were invited to interpret the theme “Winter”. Two artists represented, Nefer Kane and Keysha Costley, are doll artists who were recently profiled on BJDcollectasy. Loren of Grotesque Cabaret was a featured artist last autumn on BJDcollectasy. The remaining face-up artists promote their work regularly on Den of Angels.
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Hainee – . Point . One Aesthetics
For the theme I tried to stay close to what my style is like. When I heard ’winter’, a lot of fantasy styled face-ups popped up in my head. But that’s just not what I do, what I like to do. So I wanted to paint her in the natural style that I like so much. I found my inspiration thinking about a little kid playing out in the snow all day, or a young woman taking a stroll trough the winter cold. I tried to portray someone who’s been out in the cold and who has just got back in for a cup of hot chocolate. I added a lot of blush to her cheeks and also some on her nose, because when you’re cold your face often gets a little red. Then I added some blue tones to her lips. The face-up was done with pastels, watercolor pencils and acrylic paint.
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Loren – Grotesque Cabaret
Winter- my least favourite time of the year, and yet I was really keen to convey the idea through a BJD customisation. I wanted to juxtapose the harsh, destructive reality of extreme winter with the delicate beauty of sparkling icicles and snowflakes. As a result, I decided on the concept of an angry and craggy growth of wet and icy glacial rocks emerging from one side of the face, while at the same time leaving the other side crisp and fresh with pale wintery colours.
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Shin – Kanojo Kakumei
The head I chose for this challenge is a Dollzone Helen. I chose this head because it looks androgynous and I think it gives more ambiguity. I asociate something ambiguous and androgynous to the idea of a winter spirit, so I thought this head suited the idea pretty well. The head has a white skintone because it gives the face up an even frostier look.
When I was asked to do a face-up based on a winter theme, I tried to focus on my image of winter, which involves cold and snow. I made the make-up thinking of a Winter Queen, the one that’s cold and frosty but always watching over you. It’s like a winter spirit, so I tried to capture a concept via the face up. It’s my personal idea of what I imagine when I think of winter: if winter were a doll, it’d be the one I painted.
About the make up itself, I tried to focus most of the esthetic charge on the eyes because what I wanted was to give the doll an image of void and distant without the eyes being dull. That’s why I worked a lot on the eyeshadow and the whole eye frame. The white eyelashes complement this part of the face up. It means the eye area itself is the most important one. That’s the reason why I gave it soft, light eyebrows. The rest of the make up has a very subtle brushing -as if she were northern. A touch of pink to the lips completes the look. As a detail, the most obvious winter inspiration, are snowflakes with blue rhinestones. A lot of mixed white and blue pearl powder gives the final touch -and the frosty look.
This idea of winter was one of the face ups I had always been wanting to do -but none of my commissioners requested one! I’m so glad to finally be able to give a face to winter for BJD Collectasy.
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Unseen Stars – Stars Shine Bright
I have always loved drawing and painting human figures since I was young, but I’ve only been collecting BJDs for a little over 2 years now. Ever since I saw pictures of someones Soom Heliot on Deviantart and mistook him for an amazing digital painting I’ve been obsessed with the customization aspect of the hobby. I spent hours watching tutorials on Youtube in preparation for my first doll. The approach I’ve developed since then changes depending on what I want the end product to look like. For this face-up, with the theme of winter in mind, I used the base blushing make it look like he’d been out in the cold wind for a while by blushing with a pink much darker than I usually would on his cheeks and on the tips of his ears and nose. For the eyeshadow I took inspiration from the coppers and blues that emerge a thunder storm in the winter. They are unusually stark for this time of year from from the rain, and the clouds are so dark and sharp looking compared the storms in the summer.I also left off the eyebrows, both because the wig I was styling for is white and because I wanted the eyeshadow to give form to the eye area.The tattoo is abstracted holly, the branches and leaves colored blue to keep with the color scheme and to mimic the look of snow on the branches. And lastly for the lip lines I wanted them to be stark against the blushing, so they resemble icicles.
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Nefer Kane – Circus Kane
When I was a child, I was fascinated by the fog that breath becomes when the weather is very cold. One day, my grand mother who was even more beautiful and mesmerizing than Ava Gardner, took us, my grand father, my mother, my brother and I, to see the snow for a day. As we always lived in a very sunny and hot area of France, she offered me a very colorful fushia coat embroidered with flowers all over it and with fur inside. I was about 5… Then I remember I have been impressed by the white brightness of the landscape. I had never seen such a thing before and it looked unbelievable to me.
My cheeks and nose were red because of the cold and my grandmother said ” Look at Nefer, she looks like a little Matrioshka Princess!”
I then became interested in those women who lives in Russia with snow every winter…
In my young mind, I thought that they couldn’t miss flowers in winter because Russian ladies, in their colorful outfit, with red cheeks and nose, foggy breath are like flowers blooming on the snow.
I keep on being fascinated by those women, their traditional outfits in the snowy and icy landscape… This is what I tried to transcribe with this make up. A colorful magical flower blooming suddenly out of the white, bright, cold snow..
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Hitomifrens – HimiMO Antiquity
My inspiration for this Winter theme was the fact that I really wanted snow this winter, but sadly we did not see a single snowflake fall, even with the forecast under freezing temperatures. Winter snow looks so fluffy and just absolutely radiant when untouched, so I hope that my photo portrays my love for the softness of winter snow. Along with the this theme, I wanted to incorporate a bit of Fall, and how little we notice that snow on the ground is nature’s way of starting a new blank canvas. I hope you enjoy my interpretation for this project, and thank you so much.
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Keysha Costley – Charm City Doll
Living in Maryland, I am fortunate to experience four distinct Seasons. Spring is a pastel portrait of blooming beauty; Summer–a bright, hot tropic; Fall bursts with beautifully bold colors (yellows, reds, and oranges); and Winter is a glistening, snowy landscape. So, when I think of Winter it inspires visions of hanging icicles and clear, crisp skies the brightest blue, met by vast fields of wintery white. My face-up is also a cool blue & white, with the sparkle and shimmer of Wintertime.
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nbluju – LeapOfFaith
I have always viewed winter as treacherous. It is so cold, so dark and so very lonely. Yet, somewhere out there, a certain beauty awaits. For my representation of a Winter themed face up, I have decided to show the somewhat romantic yet also merciless side of Winter. This is a winter where frostbite will eat you up when given the chance. Ironically, the ice that takes hold of you and grasps you with its icy claws can also be very beautiful as it shimmers under the light. Here, through the usage of conventional and unorthodox materials, this doll has come to embrace the cold as he lets the ice overtake him.
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arrowchild – DollSylph
Using Winter as a theme for a face-up was a fantastic, (and wonderfully fun), challenge! I chose Solomon, my Lumedoll Saiph, for this project as he seemed most suited to portray the cold, kinetic energy of ice, which I used as my inspiration. My cues for the painted ‘cracks’ on his face came from the shapes and pathways of the fissures in breaking ice. For my palette, I chose a combination of pinks and cool blues, (colors found in both human skin and in the reflected light in melting icicles) with lacy winter white scroll work around his eyes and brows in to help soften the look.
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