Morgana

[sigune]

Little Gawain isn't alone anymore. Morgana has arrived!





Morgana is a Dollzone Aurora; I have bought her completely blank and painted her face myself. More pictures below... I need to make clothes for her (at my leisure), which is going to be a leeettle challenging because I haven't got any patterns :P.


This is her, unpainted:



She came with random acrylic eyes; I bought her some blue glass ones. Actually her eyes are the same as Little Gawain's, and Adult Gawain is wearing the ones that I originally intended for Morgana. They just happen to fit better...

At 65 cm, she is pretty tall for a female doll. Which is a little bit awkward because Morgana is quite petite - but since the only other adult doll you will ever see with her is Sir "Shorty" Gawain, that is hardly a problem :).



Here she is next to little Gawain - I'm quite happy with the proportion.



Here she has a face. While she's waiting for me to make clothes for her, she is modelling some loose fabric and a shoelace :p. I hope to make a simple chitoon-style dress for her soon so she doesn't have to train all that fabric behind her anymore. Her nun's habit will take more time because I want it fitted and I need (to make) a pattern for that. I'll also need to figure out how to do the veil, and it seems difficult to find information on exactly how those things were worn.



I have one book that is perfect for her in terms of scale. I hope it can pass for a Bible, but actually it's the Poems of Robert Burns XD. When I bought it, I didn't think it would one day be doll reading material...



Aunt and nephew are sitting peacefully in my room at this moment...



I haven't painted little Gawain's face myself; he was sold like that, with freckles and everything. One day, I'll probably wipe off the company face-up and do it myself, but - not yet. I'm a little bit nervous about painting him because he's so small... Trust me, it's fiddly enough to paint a large doll and glue in the eyelashes :).

Comments

[cabepfir.livejournal.com]

WOW - I am amazed - amazed! Morgana has such an haughty look on her! And you've been extremely good at painting her face, I wouldn't even know where to start in something like that. And pasting her eyelashes, to boot!

In some pictures she has straight hair. Did you do that as well?

[sigune.livejournal.com]

I knew you were going to ask about the hair! XD

The thing about these dolls is that very few things about them (if any at all) are supposed to be fixed. The owner can do with them whatever s/he likes. So, just like the eyes aren't fixed (you stick them in with putty; they can easily be taken out and switched for others), the hair isn't fixed to the head either. Morgana has three wigs that I have bought for her separately. And yes, though her hair really is straight, I couldn't resist getting her a wavy wig because of the pretty :P.

I have done my research before I started painting faces :). There are plenty of tutorials around, fortunately. It's important to use the right materials - nothing with oils in it, because oils damage the resin. The materials to use are powdered soft pastels and acrylic paints. And a bit of glossy varnish. The strangest thing is that if you want to paint on a doll's face, any experience with painting on paper is of surprisingly little help XD. My face-ups are really very simple; there are more detailed and elaborate ones around. But I like the dolls to reflect my style in art and to, well, look like they are *my* dolls... :)

[neke.livejournal.com]

Aw. So cute. :D

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Thanks! :D

I'm probably a bit weird, but it makes me happy to see them.

[the-winterwitch.livejournal.com]

Oh, I totally missed commenting this, too! (Just thought of it right now as I was going through my unanswered entries and found the "dead leaves" one.)

Morgana is awesome, and the face looks absolutely stunning. And 65cm? Wow, that is really a large doll.

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Thank you!
She's tall, but she doesn't feel bulky. I like her size :).

One of the difficult things with these dolls is that most of the time, you have to order them without having actually seen them, so sometimes people receive a doll that turns out to be not quite what they wanted. But Morgana and little Gawain are exactly what I hoped they would be. ♥

[the-winterwitch.livejournal.com]

you have to order them without having actually seen them

Oops, I can imagine that this is dificult. Do you get to see the face beforehand, or is that a surprise?

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Well, it *can* be a surprise... But not in the way you mean :). The thing is, companies post sales photos of their dolls, but the dolls are painted and dressed in those - and sometimes the pictures are Photoshopped to an extent. The difficulty is trying to figure out what this doll will look like unpainted, with no dress, no hair and no eyes - because most of the time, *that* is what you buy: the 'shell', you could say. Dollzone is a company that also posts pictures of blank heads, so with them, you get a pretty good idea of what you will be getting. It's one of the things I like about them. For other companies, you need to go looking for owner pictures to get a better idea of what you will be getting. When I was first looking around, I became absolutely enchanted with Souldoll dolls - but then I saw some owner pictures and found I didn't like the dolls at all O_O.

It can still be tricky. Quite a few people who collect this type of dolls don't have a problem immediately re-selling a doll once it has arrived, because it turns out it's not entirely what they wanted.

(There will be more in my reply to your other comment...)

[the-winterwitch.livejournal.com]

Wow, that sounds complicated. And I can't access dollzone since I can't skip the intro, and this doesn't load with my most current browser version... :o|

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Try "Mint on Card" (+ bjd or doll, if you don't get there immediately) - this is an American dealer with plenty of good photos on their site from Dollzone and other companies. The Dollzone site has been acting up lately :(.

It is less complicated than it sounds, really - it just takes some getting used to :D. Goody, I can tell you so very much about these dolls (and I'm a newbie!), I don't know what to say first!