Lachlana Light transforms blank heads into characters with distinctive spots, scars, tics and traits. Her style is a perfect match for the doll sculpts of Aubrey Meeks.
Vano, a collaborative project, will be released soon at Meeksdoll.
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Q: I usually start by asking for a little background. Can you tell me a little about yourselF?
A: So, I’m actually a writer first. Practically life-long, I’ve written dozens of novels and stories but I’m pretty averse to publishing at the moment. Whether that’s creative anxiety (yes) or perfectionism (also yes), it really depends on the day. I find it much harder to share my written work outside a close circle of friends and family, but I manage ways to share it through my art–in particular my dolls–despite myself. My inspiration tends to stray toward the darker side of things. The material really matches the look of the dolls I paint and a lot of them are characters directly from the material (Lyova, Poe, Tommy, Morgan, Jersey, Simon–the list goes on). So that haggard, runny-eyeliner, post-bender rock star with a penchant for lurking in dark alleys appeal. That’s my aesthetic. LOL, It’s definitely my writing style reflected in resin, but it took me years to get to this point. I evolved through a variety of different styles from way back when painting symmetrical eyebrows and never blushing a nose were required attributes in a faceup. I’ve since broken all of those rules–happily. lol
I started collecting BJDs in 2006. I found my first boy by accident while looking for something J-rock related and I ended up involved in an eBay auction to get him without the slightest clue what I was getting myself into. I did no homework on him, I just jumped into the deep end with both feet and a grin on my face. He’s a CP Delf Dreaming Vamp Shiwoo I still have and have never repainted out of nostalgia. I discovered the community shortly thereafter on DoA, where I threw myself into the hobby pretty relentlessly. The dolls, of course, started to multiply.
At first, though, I was too afraid to try my hand at painting, even though I knew I desperately wanted to. A friend of mine asked me to try it on her doll and that’s what broke me in. I was very happy doing it and started to buy dolls I wanted to paint, rather than the ones I just wanted to own. It grew from there.
Art runs in my family on both sides, but I’m mostly self-taught because my parents forbade me from following it professionally. Not that I ever considered myself at a professional level despite having early ambitions to be an illustrator. I’ve done a lot of drawing and painting in different mediums (charcoal, watercolor, oil, acrylic, digital) and I’ve done some sculpting. I was always interested in creating three-dimensional images of my original characters, and BJD really presented a medium for me to do that, especially as the sculpts got more and more realistic.
Working with Meeksdoll on Vano is the first time since joining the hobby that I’ve had a doll actually made from one of my characters and it’s been a truly wonderful and exciting experience. He was initially a character I never intended to pursue in resin until she offered to collab, and now he’s pretty much exactly the way I would have imagined him. Better, actually. And he’s a versatile mold if you look at the two different Vanos we own–Aubrey has this gentle, warming, soulful kind of boy, and mine is a surly, brooding soldier from WW2. Polar opposites.
Q: So when did you transition from painting for yourself to painting for others?
A: I did end up taking on commissions shortly after initially getting my painting groove on, but I stretched myself thin trying to accommodate styles and requests that really didn’t gel with what I enjoyed doing. I didn’t really get that at the time, because I hadn’t really figured out what my style was. I was taking inspiration and learning from all my favorite doll artists in the hobby and it took a good amount of painting before I understood there were styles and commissions that would make me happy and ones that wouldn’t, and I had to try to steer my ship on the right course. lol Now I take commissions pretty sparingly (the only way I’ve lasted as long in the hobby as I have is by taking breaks when I’m not feeling it), and all my current commissions usually fall within my style. I won’t really take on something that doesn’t speak to me unless it’s something I want to try. Though I do have a long-time friend I still paint fancy Sooms for lol, she got ‘grandfathered’ in. So I think in a way, even painting for others, I’m still really painting for myself otherwise I get depressed and my hobby starts to feel like work. lol- I have enough work in my life.
Q: How would you describe your style?
A: I would say it’s kind of like a frontman in a grungy rock band who went on a bender and woke up the next morning not knowing what state he’s in. LOL! Jokes aside, I really prefer realism. The more I painted and started to find my voice, so to speak; the more and more I gravitated toward realistic styles. I like asymmetrical eyebrows and skin texture, I love characteristic imperfections like eye bags and runny eyeliner, or scars or beauty marks. I love freckles. I’m very heavy-handed on blushing; I’ve changed the skin tones of whole dolls by hand (with no airbrush) just applying layers of pastel and paint. When painting for myself, I go all out. When painting for others, I usually have to queue up a reality check that my style is heavy and dark and I should probably warn them about what they’re getting into.
Q: Tell me a little more about your doll collection.
A: I have an embarrassing number of dolls, the last count was hovering around 45 (it used to be higher, but I’ve been selling.) At this point, I’ve begun to circulate on and off displaying them. Some are now just floating heads, many I’ve put away to give myself some breathing room and to focus on the current favorites. My Instagram is pretty indicative of who in those 45 has the spotlight most of the time, but many of the dolls I’ve painted in mid-recent history are on my Flickr.
When I started, I was big into Luts and the CP Delf line. I went for the stylized look, but over time, as new molds came out that were more realistic, I gravitated toward them. I own from a number of companies as well as smaller artists – Iplehouse, Dollshe, Soom, Pygmalion Doll, Alice in Labyrinth, Dollzone, Migidoll, MSdoll, Limhwa, LLT, Little Rebel, Ringdoll, and some others.
Early on, I used to create characters for the dolls, but now it’s very much about dolls for the characters (I’m not sure which philosophy gets me into more trouble). My main crew of current faves are all a part of my written work, in particular my Dollshe Saint, Poe, my Iplehous Arvid, Morgan, my Pygmalion Doll Ha, Tommy, (I have to name-drop “my” Soom Io, Jersey, too—he actually belongs to my wife & photographer, AC Santos, but I pretend he’s mine. Lol) AND of course, my Meeksdoll Vano, Lyova.
Q: How did you get to know Aubrey?
A: We met on Instagram in 2017, I think, and got to chatting a lot. Eventually, I started to share with her some of my writing and she really showed some amazing enthusiasm about it, even as I was turning whole books upside-down because I’m never satisfied with them. It was (and still is) very awesome of her to embrace what I was creating in that way, and we occasionally talked about how cool it would be to collab on something together. I wanted to paint her original molds and Aubrey mentioned making dolls of some of my characters, which was honestly, the coolest praise ever.
Q: How exactly did Vano come about?
A: Vano was that idea actually coming to fruition. I honestly can’t remember the exact way it went down. Several months ago (last spring, maybe?), I was eyeball-deep in my latest writing project and I was telling her about it and about the protagonist whom I have a very particular image of, so much so, I wasn’t actively looking for a doll mold because I knew he wouldn’t turn out quite right. I was also sort of on a doll hiatus at the time. Aubrey suggested collaborating to create him, but she didn’t just suggest it, she went ahead and made it happen.
It was immensely exciting to watch him come to life through her talent and her process of creating her dolls, and I’m so grateful she has such a love and appreciation of the character to want to devote that sort of time and effort to him and add him to her roster of unique molds. I feel very fortunate, and she really captured him in a way I couldn’t imagine. When I was painting him, I was just kind of blown away about it—it’s not every day I get to quite so authentically paint the face of someone who lives in my head. He turned out to be quite a versatile mold too! I want to paint another one in a completely different style just to see what else he can do, though I admit, it’s tempting to just paint him over and over again because it’s such a thrill.
Q: Thanks for chatting with me. Anything else you would like to add?
A: I’d just like to shout out to my better half, AC Santos (IG: acsantos). She’s usually the eye behind the camera when it comes to taking photos of the dolls I paint. She’s a pro concert photographer IRL, and she does a phenomenal job making resin look like rock stars too.
Vano will be released soon at Meeksdoll
Previous article on Meeksdoll may be seen HERE
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