Eve's Makeup Routine

Yesterday I got a fun question from Jess: “Eve is wearing lipstick in one of her posts, did you use actual lipstick on her, or did you repaint her?”

The short answer is “neither”.  

The long answer is that there are some incredibly talented artists out there that are able to paint and repaint their dolls with skill, confidence, and ease; I’m not one of them.  I’m also not sure I could manage to get lipstick onto Eve’s tiny lips without smearing it all over her face, and I’d be concerned that removing it might damage her repaint.  I used photoshop for the look that she was wearing a dark, red lip.

I haven’t actually played around with different makeup looks for Eve, though I probably should to add a little variety.  The photos you’ve seen on the blog are as they were taken, though I do tend to tweak overall color and occasionally add expressions (like smiles and smirks).  Still, this question got me thinking, and I decided to toy around in photoshop a bit today.  Here’s what I came up with:

In each of the images, the left is the “before” image and it hasn’t been altered.

In the photo above, there’s a basic contouring guide in the center, and to the right is the end result of the contouring in action. While I like that her face seems lighter, it looks like she might have gone overboard with a bronzer.

In this next photo, I kept the contouring and enhanced the color of her eyes. I also darkened the shading around her eye to make them “pop” a bit more. I like the look, but again I think I went overboard with the effect just a tad:

I figured, if I could enhance the color of her eyes, maybe I could change it entirely.

What would Eve look like with green eyes? They’re a bit on the intense side, but it’s a neat look, and it’ll come in handy when/if I do something wild for Halloween in future:

In this last photo, I softened the contouring to about half, then tried out a summery look—a glossy lip, a bit too much blush (not intentional), and bright eye shadow colors.  I love the glossy lip, and I think out of each of the looks, it’s my favorite.

As you can see, photoshop allows for plenty of different looks; each one took me between ten and fifteen minutes, and I’m not a pro, far from it.  I like the results in general because I enjoy variety, but I feel like the full contouring actually took away from the realistic quality of her features.  Even so, it’s nice to know I’m able to give her a slightly different look if the mood strikes.

Thanks for stopping by, and I encourage you to try toying around in photoshop.