It always works this way for me. I lose interest in the hobby when my life gets busy. I move on- until something sparks my interest once again. This time it was the idea of repainting a lot of my Monster High dolls. I have a huge collection as I started picking them up when the first wave released. Many of them just live in storage now because I have no space to display them all. I only display the models that I'm really in love with. These are usually the more unique ones- like Howleen with her floppy ears and a Spectra with her transparent limbs.
I decided to try my hand at something I've always wanted to do: repaint a Monster High doll. For my first attempt I chose Howleen. She's one of my absolute favorite characters and I couldn't resist giving her a new look. I did a quick mockup in Sketchbook to plan out the repaint. I deviated from it quite a bit in the end, but overall I kept the general idea in my mind. I made her a purple wig out of yarn wefts and it turned out a lot better than I expected.
I also ran into quite a few problems when repainting and rewigging this girl. I realized I chose one of the most difficult dolls for my first attempt. Not only does Howleen have ears to work around when gluing on wefts, but she is also darker skinned which made building up colors during the repaint a longer process. I still wasn't completely happy with the vibrancy of most colors- especially the white. I ended up using gouache to fill in the whites of her eyes, but it was accidentally reactivated with the gloss I used. It ran into her corners and down to her waterline. It was an absolute mess! Lesson definitely learned for next time.
Overall, I'm happy with the result. I need a lot of practice, but the process was so much fun it will barely feel like practice at all! I'm really excited to work on another doll. I'd also like to maybe buy some alpaca fiber to make wigs out of or possibly some loose fibers to try my hand at rerooting.
I suppose these new adventures will be a reason to try and keep up with this blog. We'll see where it takes me! Thanks for stopping by!
