Cottagecore doll face design

Now that I’m pretty sure I’ve got all the necessary supplies to finish my cottagecore doll idea, I’m running out of excuses to actually try making her. So, I figured I better prevaricate over the face design as well!

I looked up a blank image of my base doll’s face mold. I originally thought I’d just draw digitally on top of the image, but I don’t really have a program that would let me do that, and didn’t feel like messing around until I found one. So I just laid my sketchbook over the image on my iPad and traced it so I could do a hand-drawn version in colored pencils, like the outfit sketches.



I’m not great at smoothly blending in colored pencil. And I found the green shades I thought were close variations of each other had noticeably different amounts of yellow or blue when laid down next to each other, which makes them stand out from each other even further. But I do think I managed to figure out where the lights and darks should be on the face, even if on the actual doll I need to do a better job of managing the colors.

I’m trying to create a sense of dimension in the plastic, but not so much that it comes off like she’s wearing makeup. Again, trying for a forest dweller character who’s not too fancy. I like the idea of the eyebrows matching the hair, or if orange paint would even show up that cleanly on the mint-green. Maybe if I lay down white first. But I may end up having to just make them a dark green in a similar family as the lips. I do like the violet eyes though; I think they go well.

At some point, I need to just quit planning and make the thing. For some reason I’m nervous to start. But I think I will enjoy the process once I get going.