Absolute disaster 😪

I hate it. Looks dead to me. I spent so much time on this doll. Its



my first painted eith air air dry

You’ll get better as you learn!

It looks like, to me, the paint was too thick.
I use these two products in my paint mixes to help blend and thin the paints, as well as distilled water:


Adding those products helped a ton.

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Ok, deep breath! This baby is not as horrendous as you feel like. It is a starting point for a learning process. This process of trial and error. From what I can see in the photos, you have a good balance of colors. The blue undertones do not look obtrusively dark and the reds seem to be blended pretty well. It does appear that your flesh layers were applied a bit too thickly and the lip coloring could have been applied in more thin layers. It is also important to watch for pooling of painting the lip creases and eye creases. I generally stay away from Caucasian flesh tones and work more with colors but when I have used them to balance things out a bit I find you have to pounce them out very thin so as not to get a pasty look. Adding a retarder and/or flow medium to your water in your air dry paints helps as well. Building color in thin washes makes for a more translucent skin tone. Thin as in pounced and mottled out in thin applications of paint, not as in super watered down paint. However, paint does have to be thinned down as well. With air dry paints it is a constant battle of trying to find the balance between thinning the paints enough and not over watering them so as to cause fading down the road. You just have to keep working at it until you find your rythem and get a feel for how your particular paints work best. I would recommend watching some of Jen Len’s videos and joining her Patreon page for a month at least to watch her paint. You might find that helpful.

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Agreed. When i did use airdry i used golden retarder, medium, and glazing. It certainly helped a lot. Plus the many layers of thin paint. I had a habit of trying to do all creasing, all tones, and all blushing in one layer. Doesnt work out

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Here is Jen’s Youtube channel

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Lara, I remember your ‘I hate reborning post’.
I know you got lots of encouragement then and you’ll get the same encouragement again…
But if it’s not your ‘thing’ then stop torture yourself. Be a collector. You still can be a part of this forum .

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if you like it at all, keep practicing…thats the only way to get good at anything in life.
if you don’t like it, find a new hobby :woman_shrugging:t3:

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It looks oke for a first baby i sometimes see babies for sale that did not look at good as this one
You wil be doing oke keep practice the importent thing is that you love to do it than you wil see it get better by the time :hugs:

Have you had a vision check recently? I’m wondering if you’re struggling with up close vision, maybe that’s why you’re not seeing the results you want and why you’re not enjoying it.

I use computer strength glasses when I reborn, a lot of people use reading glasses.

See if glasses would help you, and I think you should take a break and watch more tutorials then try again. Watch the techniques for how people blend and how they use their brushes and sponges.

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The whole problem here is the thickness of the paint (IMO). You just need to go much more slowly, be very patient, thin your paints well, and add many extremely sheer layers.

I know it seems like that takes forever, and at first it looks like there’s no color going on at all. There is, trust me.

The actual colors you chose look good. Honestly, for a first baby, you should NOT be this hard on yourself. My feeling is that if you take the advice people have given here, you could definitely have a talent for this.

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I do struggle with my sight now yes. I have been prescribed glasses

Should i strip and restart do you think?

I would…

Im stripping as i dont like the veins and the paint is splotchy

Good plan… more practice!

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Yup! Go for it!