Dye Jobs and Face-ups

I can only speak for myself, but I probably would only work on it if I dyed it myself. The reason is simple: if something happens and I'm forced to wipe the head, I can re-dye it again. I had to do that in the past for my own projects.
Another is that I don't know how the head looks like in real. If the dye job isn't well made it might be harder to get a nice faceup painted onto the head, or future viewers might think I'm also responsible for the (bad) dye job.

However, there might be exceptions. I'm not completely ruling it out, but I wouldn't feel comfortable about it most of the time.

 

Well, I have worked on several dyed dolls, and if nothing goes wrong, then it's really no different than working on any other doll (of similar resin colors) however, from the potential perspective of a Faceup artist trying to make a profit, it invites so many problems. From the perspective of having to run a business, more opportunities for excess sucking of time and labor are not very appealing because this is where you lose any profit you might have been making. In this respect I wouldn't be surprised to hear that most big artists wouldn't work on them. In my opinion, less popular artists are often willing to take bigger risks to secure the work because it's simply so hard to get the work.
Back to technical issues specifically: working over a sloppy and uneven dye job is truly miserable, and in order to make it look good you may find yourself going to great lengths to correct it with color, visual texture and texture (think, hyperrealism). In the event that you had to wipe the head, from what I understand you may expect the color that was dyed to be somewhat altered from the solvent. When I've worked on them I've pretty much just put my blinders on and said "no room for doubts, just get it right the first time!"

 

I literally just sent a dyed head to a faceup artist yesterday - on the understanding that it's an experiment on their part and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

Teddy

 

You sealing it won't make a difference, and most artists prefer to do the sealing themselves as well. If you made a mistake with the first sealing layer and it later causes the face-up to crack, it might fall back onto the artist again.
The reason why your sealing won't make a difference is because when something happens that forces the artist to wipe the face-up they started, the sealant you applied as well as the dye will be affected as well. For example, I dyed a doll and then something went wrong airbrushing one of the parts. I had to remove the already applied airbrush job/sealant, and doing so lightened up/removed the dye job as well. In my case that was no issue, it was a simple dye job and I still had leftover dye to re-dye the piece. But with a customer it's basically what Alison said: I'd need to hope and pray absolutely nothing goes wrong
I always do that, because every time I have to re-do something it basically kills all the profit I could have made, but here the stakes are especially high.

Airbrushing the head...well, there are two problems with that. First, it will not look the same. Dye that penetrated a porous surface will not look the same way/reflect light the same way a surface that was covered with opaque paint does.
Second, painting on airbrushed heads is a bit eh to be honest. The surface gets more coarse, and makes all other steps afterwards less enjoyable. You just can't achieve a really smooth look.

I think the two options you have is a) find an artist that does both dye-ing and painting OR b) find someone that is willing to give it a try.
How willing they are might fully depend on the dye color and your face-up request.

 

I’ve sent dolls I’ve dyed off to a few “big name” artists before, the big thing is to ask if they’re comfortable and accept the terms and risks involved, usually with accepting a disclaimer that the artist won’t be at fault if the dye job was messed up in any way
There can be issues if the faceup needs to be wiped for any reason and you’d have to be the one to redye it if wiping significantly altered the dye job
For me, it was a risk I was willing to take as I dye them myself so it wouldn’t have been a big deal for me to redye if something went wrong, but not everyone is okay with redyeing dolls

 

Like above poster said, the best way to do this is ask your preferred artist first if they are able and willing to work with you.
For me for exhample, I really wanted to have Pauli (paulianne.dolls on insta) to paint my dyed dream doll as she did such great work on previous commissions. So I contacted her and we talked this whole thing through and she agreed. Had she not agreed Id probably not gone ahead with the dyeing.