After dipping a round or two with pastels and watercolor pencils, I took it all off and started over, using straight acrylic paint.
Gooliope's body painting has been tricky for me. I started out messing around with the watercolor pencils and pastels that are sort of the standard everyone's using on their blogs, and it just wasn't doing it for me. Maybe I don't have the hang of pastels, maybe my pastels are too cheap, maybe my sealant's are off, blah blah.
So I got to thinking.
Why is the standard in the Monster High mod community the same pastel, pencil, and MSC cocktail that we use for BJD's?
There's a lot of reasons I can think of. Those materials are easy to make changes on. They're soft and blendable and they're flexible and they layer well. They don't contain oil, which can eat into the plastic and make it unstable.
But I think a lot of it is that those are the materials you need for BJD faceups.
And ball jointed dolls are just inherently very different from Monster High girls. One is resin. One is vinyl and hard plastic.
And more importantly, one is $30 and one is $700.
Pastels and watercolor pencils and layer upon layer of Mr Super Clear are completely removable. You can take a doll that's been faceup'd and wipe it down to nothing.
This is very important if you want to sell the doll again, or if you change your mind about the character you built, or you really messed up.
If I really mess up on Gooliope, and I can't change it or fix it, I'm going to go buy a new Gooliope. Sorry, girl.
So all that shading (which looks better in person) is just one color of 97 cent acrylic paint and a 18/0 round brush, and a bit of shading with a #2 shader.
I'm definitely a fan of sealing the body and sealing it again whenever you're really happy with what you're working on. Working in layers is really helpful.
But again, with my sealer problems. See, the fact is, both BJD and Monster High customs have this love of this sealer called Mr Super Clear. You have to buy it from Japan and have it shipped. It has no equal. It is amazing.
And carcinogenic.
See, I think I mentioned earlier that two of my family members were diagnosed with cancer this year (and it's only February! Plenty more family members to go~! *sigh*). One of them has lung cancer, and since he lives where I live, I'm going to get to watch him fight it. He got lung cancer from smoking pretty much his whole life.
Now, I hadn't really thought about cancer, and I had always figured since I've never smoked, don't smoke, and never will smoke, I didn't have a lot to worry about. And then I thought about the times I've done things like spray paint in a dorm room that only had a tiny window that only opened part way. Or use my hand as a pallette for paint without checking the contents of the paint. I was constantly putting my hands in messes and cleaning chemicals that I didn't know what was in, for the past three years at my job. I've always And I started thinking, maybe I should check out what's in the things I'm using.
And, while I was reading up on if the sprays I had bought at Michael's needed respirators to use them, or something, I found out something interesting.
If something is confirmed to be carcinogenic, there are serious labeling laws that fall into effect. Where it can be sold, to whom it can be sold, all that. But if it's a "suspected carcinogen," all it needs is a footnote in it's MSDS.
I'm rambling now.
Now, I live in California, and the one thing you get very good at, living in California, is ignoring Prop 65 Warnings. Some point, a long time ago, a law was passed in California that anything or any place with "chemicals know to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm," had to be labeled. However, the amount that requires that warning is so small that it's on things like coffee, listed in every gas station, and just in general everywhere that you need to go to get by with your daily life. The threshold for what requires the label is so low that it's impossible to tell the difference between anything really dangerous and coffee. The end result is that I'm always skeptical of anything or anyone who says, "This causes cancer."
However, if I'm going to be using something more than once, and I have options that might be carcinogenic and options that definitely aren't carcinogenic, that's now a factor in my choosing. After all, MSDSs are available online and spell out pretty easily if you need a respirator and all the other bad things that can happen with this stuff.
I'm also interested in finding an alternative to Mr Super Clear that I don't need to buy online. I've now spent about twice as much on sealer than just buying a can of MSC, but god damn it I'm a girl on a mission now. So, I tested Krylon's Matte Finish UV-Resistant Acrylic Coating against Krylon's Matte Sealer from their Chalky Finish line. They performed identically, except for drying time. Really, they were identical. Scratch resistance, pencil and paint adhesion, dust collection, identical. The UV-Resistant blocks UV, the Chalky doesn't. The Chalky dries faster. The difference that mattered to me is that on the MSDS, the UV Resistant said it was suspected to cause cancer, and the Chalky didn't say that. Both of them have a Prop 65 warning on the can. As a side note, Design Master's Super Surface Spray doesn't need a Prop 65 warning, which I find interesting. A look at their matte clear finish says it doesn't need respiratory protection, which means I'm going to seek that out to test.
If I say I don't use Mr Super Clear for danger reasons, I feel like I need to seek out the safest spray for the sake of not being hypocritical.
That being said, I'm not selling my dolls. I'm painting and prettying them up so I can take pictures of them, and for the fun of prettying them and making something. I'm not trying to be the best out there. All I want is to have materials that are good enough that I don't want to stab them while I'm working, and that do what I want them to do well enough that I have fun and not frustration. I want a collection that I'm proud of, not a collection that blows everyone's minds. This isn't a hobby I feel like I should put myself at unnecessary risk for. If I can find two products that perform comparably, I'm willing to choose the safer one over one that performs marginally better.
Now, as I get more into this, I might change that view, but right now that's where I stand.
So, tomorrow I finish painting her legs, give her a coat of chalky finish*, do some highlighting with watercolor pencil, and go in for the finer body blushing with loose pastel powder**. Then a coat of Super Surface, which is a great final seal, and call the body good. Then the hair, another coat of eye gloss, and painting all her accessories.
I might stop there for a while, while I design and plan out how I'm going to make that monster of a dress.
And somewhere in that process I'll make Ghoulia some pants.
____
*Super Surface is safer than Chalky Finish. Requires no respiratory protection, has safer ingredients. However, it really doesn't perform like the other two sealers I've tried. The pencils can't get a grip, and the doll gets shiny look after a while. I can't use it as my main sealer in the same way I can't use a tampon to put on eyeliner. It's a different product.
**I also need to get a disposable respirator for pastel work, I know. I'll pick one up the next time I go out.
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