Would you rather commission a faceup, or do it yourself?

Defs get it commissioned, tried doing one of my doll's (not a bjd though) faceup once and it was just horrible, esp the brows ! ><

 

To be honest, I'm bit confused about that at the moment.
The first face up I did myself and I failed big time
That resulted in commissioning a face up artist, alas with mixed results. Most of them turned out amazing. But a revision turned out aweful and on the latest commission I never got a good result (2 artists).
So back to doing things myself. Currently recruiting my sister to lend a hand, because she might be a better at it after all.
If shipping would not be so d@mn expensive I would definitely commission again.

 

I have never intentionally bought a doll with a faceup, occasionally I've gotten a secondhand doll who already had a one but I have never ordered one from a company or commissioned one... Not even for my first doll! I'm very much a do-it-yourself believer when it comes to faceups ^^ I really like being able to customize my dolls myself...it's the main reason why I collect. I actually don't think I would buy BJDs if it wasn't to work on them myself. It's Aldo how I bond with my dolls, for whatever reason dolls that I haven't painted myself don't feel like mine.

Everyone's opinion is different but I always encourage people to try faceups themselves! It's a big part of this hobby!(:

 

I've done one face-up very nicely on my Merry, but the second I did on my Incubi was an absolute disaster... So I'll be commissioning his face-up, and I'll train my face-up skills on Merry's human face.

 

I paint them myself. I used to be not so good when I first started but I didn't like the idea of sending my dolls off so I kept practicing. Now I'm much better. =)

 

I used to love doing face-ups, but now I prefer having them done by someone else/getting defaults because of CTS. At first it was a little irritating to accept that I couldn't really do it anymore, but now it's not so bad. :3

 

I plan on doing all of my face ups myself. I ordered my first boy with the company face up just to see how they looked in person. Now that I can see it, I decided I will do them for myself unless I really like the company's face up.

 

So far I am enjoying learning how to do my own face-ups. It's fun and with a magic eraser, mistakes aren't a big deal! It's also coming to be my way of bonding with my dolls. I keep them without a face-up for awhile until I have settled on the exact way I want the characters looks to be on the doll, and then I go from there. I think if I ever got a limited edition or some really fancy idea that I couldn't do with pastels and watercolours I would send them out to an artist though.

 

I have done all of my own faceups so far. There are some great faceup artists out there to commission, and I'll readily admit that they're better at painting dolls than I am, but at this point there are several reasons why I have no intention of commissioning a faceup: 1) I enjoy doing my own dolls and am learning and improving more with every faceup and I want to continue getting better, and 2) if I were to get a pro faceup done on a future doll, they would look out-of-place with the rest of my dolls that all have my faceups, and that would bug the crap out of me for a myriad of reasons. My faceups aren't the absolute best in the whole world, but all my dolls have my style and it makes them coherent with one another. And 3) the whole reason I enjoy bjds so much is because of the customizing. Each doll is a fresh art project! I don't want to have anyone else do ANY part of that process. I love trying new customizing stuff/different types of modding, doing the faceups, designing the style/hair/eyes, and sewing their clothing. Commissioning any of it is, to me, like paying someone else to have MY fun!

 

I can't paint at all. My hands shake too much and I wouldn't even try to paint a faceup on expensive doll. Therefore all my dolls' faceups are done by others.

 

I really enjoy doing the faceups myself! However, I have a huge admiration for the person who does the bjd faceup stories on youtube. If I were to commission anyone, it would be them ^_^

 

I would love to be able to do my own face-ups (I can be rather, um, frugal. lol) BUT since I cannot draw or paint a recognizable facial feature to save my life... I definitely send my dolls off for custom face-ups! :-)

 

It would be nice to be able to do my own faces, but I've always hated painting doll's faces from the time I was a OOAK doll artist. Plus I can't paint a thin line if my life depended on it. Of course, having a friend whose a professional face up artist live just 20 minutes away, means I don't need to. I LOVE what she does, so why bother? Now, if I had to actually pay to send my dolls off in the mail, that might be more incentive to try it myself.

 

To be clear, it's definitely not cheap to do your own faceups! I do my own, but I've invested quite a bit into the pastels and watercolor pencils I use, the cheapest sealant I'll use is still $10 for a small can, and even the gloss I use for finishing doesn't run cheap. That's not to mention the pastel brushes (that eventually get trashed), the tiny paintbrushes for the gloss, the eyelashes and glue for those, the materials for cleaning off old faceups and cleaning them before facing up and blushing, the respirator mask and cartridges for it, the stands to hold pieces when spraying, plastic gloves for handling clean pieces... there's nothing frugal at all about doing your own faceup!

But to me, it's satisfying to make a doll my own that way. Even when I have a problematic faceup or blushing, it's still mine, and I can fix the problems or make it better later on down the road.

 

I'm in the commission club for now. I am artistic enough to draw what I want, but painting is not my medium. Not sure I would do it enough to get good at it.

 

I enjoy doing faceup by myself. That way, I feel like I can bond with my doll better and proud that doll faceup is made by me.
Also, I'm quite an impatient person and probably can't wait for the waiting time given by the artist, so rather than I bugging the artist, I just do it myself

 

I like doing it myself. It helps me "bond" and I feel like I could have a really good skillset to maybe take commissions someday if I keep practicing. I find working on them to be quite relaxing, too. It makes you focus on just one thing and the real world kind of melts away for a few hours.

 

9/10 times I prefer to do it on my own, except if I want a very specific style I can't pull off or there's an artist whose style I like really much and want to have it done by them.

 

Commission if it doesn't have official faceup.
I just can't do it nicely.

 

I'd prefer to commission it. Face-up artists out there are great at painting small details which I can hardly do