To own or to paint

Surely you are not alone. Some artists sell or auction their prepainted heads!
You get to enjoy the experience of painting something new and then get most or all of your initial investment back... not a terrible deal!
I have also seen them donated at doll events for giveaways which I think is another nice option if you get the head cheaply and are feeling generous. Or you could gift them to a friend which I have done in the past.

If you're removing a company face up to paint your own, unless you are a coveted face up artist, you may end up selling at a loss. I have even seen nice heads by known artists auction for barely over blank, because taste and timing is a big factor in how much you'll get back out of it. You will be more likely to break even on your investment if you buy blank heads. But even if you do come out at a loss, it's still less loss than buying a head, painting it and racking up bills for a body and all its accessories

I don't think it is particularly worth it to buy a full doll for the enjoyment of painting its head. People always wanna ask for a split even if you say you don't want to So the doll may be sitting with you longer than you wanted to, and if you split off the body, they tend to move slowly.
Of course if you're a known face up artist than you may be able to get away with it and even make out in profit.

Anyway I know you weren't asking anything about making money, but one way to cope with this urge is to just buy the head and offset some of your investment costs by selling it after you've had your fun!

 

This is a big reason why I want to offer faceup commissions one day. I've had great fun painting my dolls, but I don't own many, don't want to repaint their faces constantly (for character reasons), and redoing my practice head gets boring eventually. I'd like to paint more variety of sculpts and learn how to do different faceup styles. I'm SURE this is a big reason why people do faceup commissions - to have the enjoyment of painting different dolls without needing to own them.

 

Sometimes I do see sculpts that I just want to get my hands on, often ones that I see all painted in a similar style that I feel doesn't complement the sculpting. Sometimes I think I've mistaken wanting to paint a sculpt over wanting to actually own it, and figured it out the hard way.

 

I feel like that a lot. I always did, because I crave learning experiences and it was always exciting to see new sculpts, but I don't like to have infinite dolls. Honestly, years ago, when I could afford it, I would sometimes buy a new face if it wasn't too expensive and if I didn't want to keep it after a while I could usually sell it with my faceups pretty quickly. Definitely not the case anymore unfortunately. Oh well. Sometimes now I still feel very bored and spend a little money. I try to tell myself I can sell them later if they don't work out. It's just really gruelling these days.
Realistically I fell in love with most of the heads at least for a few years after anyway. It's a dangerous thing

 

You're not alone in this feeling! I have a list of sculpts I want to paint but not necessarily own, and if they're selling for a low enough price I might consider buying them to paint and resell. Like those before me have mentioned, that could be at a potential loss since the marketplace is not that great nowadays, but I see it as a small price to pay to satisfy my curiosity (especially when compared to the bigger price tag of actually getting a body, wig, eyes etc for the head if I were to keep it).

Someone earlier mentioned doing faceup commissions as another way to see and paint these sculpts without owning the head. What I've seen some faceup artist do is offer a discounted price on the faceup if clients have the sculpt they want to paint. So that's another possible option!

 

I do feel exactly that way, and felt that from the very beginning of discovering BJD, a million years ago. I feel it's probably because of my traditional artist background, but at the same time I could never bring myselfto own so many head sculpts. Although, I was willing to own many resin floating heads in the beginning, it was always a matter of me loving the sculpt. If I don't love it, as tempting as it is to want to paint it (or heavily modify a lot of them), I can't justify owning things I don't love. More so resin, because I don't love resin.

I also don't take commissions and never wanted to. Although, I have been asked about it, within this genre and 1:6 scale action figures. I have zero interest in doing so. So, I was never going to get to paint (or modify) as many of the heads I wanted to, but I am okay with never doing it with resin BJD heads. I am happy to getting to try on 1:6 figures and fashion dolls, even if they are more of a challenge with my shaky hands, they are often my preferred sizes and plastics. (:

 

I have so, so many dolls I really just wish to customize, photograph once, and then sell on. Unfortunately the base price of a BJD, the long wait times and the fact most people want to customize themselves/want their OCs, kills that business model

But that's one reason I became a faceup artist.
I got to work on a doll without having to commit to it, got to see it in real life before making a decision, and was able to realize that some dolls I truly only enjoyed because they were customized nicely by others. There are so many cool Venitus out there for example, but once I had one at home as commission I realized I don't care for the sculpt itself at all