Dollshe Grown Bermann and faceup chatter
I always loved Dollshe Bermann, but the timing was never right to buy one - and then later, I heard that it became unwise to buy from the company due to long delivery times. There was a re-release of Bermann's sculpt with some slight changes, called Grown Bermann. I was lucky enough to find a Grown Bermann second-hand, and even luckier to find a matching body at the same time.
I'm the world's most amateur faceup artist. Every time I do one I see glaring mistakes that seem like they should have been obvious at the time. But he has a faceup, and I finished it just before a week of rain where I can't spray the necessary sealant, so it's sort of a win?
My list of self-criticisms: the lower lashes are far too thick and there's too much dark shading on the outer edges - it's unbalanced. His mouth somehow looks smaller than when it was unpainted (too dark, maybe?). All the lines are generally messy. And are the eyebrows a tiny bit too high? I probably need to do this a few hundred more times before I get better.
The eyes are nice, but I'm not convinced by the wig, which is really low quality and sheds if you even so much as glance at it. I'm actually second-guessing if he should have black hair, but that would really need a faceup change unless we imagine that he's wearing mascara. Maybe he is. Maybe he's going for a Brian Molko look from the 90s.
I've been finding it hard to find space and time for doll things, lately. And it's so, so, SO much easier to fall into easy consumerism, especially if you have to hunt something down, which makes it even more exciting when you find it, and then you have to wait for the parcel, following the tracking (tiny dopamine bursts all the way when it updates) and finally the item arrives and... you do nothing with it because you're tired.
I think I am at or reaching doll capacity, so I need to train myself back into the habit of doing all the other things I enjoy about the hobby (really, buying dolls is the smallest part of it, but it became the thing I do most). So while this faceup isn't exactly what I envisioned, I still finished it, and I am really pleased about that. (I even put in eyelashes, which is actually the worst thing ever.) He has a face. I took photos. And I'm knitting him a jumper.
(Does he have a name? Of course not.)