Unfortunately, I do NOT have pics from the stages of painting as I was on my second faceup in 24 hours and just wanted to get done! I will talk a little about what I did, though. We're going to skip ahead to blushing, and then come back so I can talk about my method with the picture of the finished job.

I had a terrible time picking out colors when I went to purchase pastels for blushing, so hopefully this may be useful. I have two Rembrandts and one Schminke. The Schminke is considerably softer, so it's easier to powder, but I haven't noticed any difference in the results. From a color standpoint, I actually now mix all THREE of these pastels together for blushing and have found that a satisfactory shade. The far right pastel is too orange on its own; the middle is too pink; and the far right too dark. If you're having trouble with colors, remember that you can mix them.

Before you start blushing, you should coat your work so far with one or two coats of MSC. You can coat between steps like the eyes and lips as well, if you like.

Also in the shot is the brush that I use for applying pastels. I wasn't sure what to get since I had not read anywhere what was best; I picked a fairly large brush with stiff bristles. It seems to work, though I want to get a smaller one for tighter areas. When I'm applying blush to the lower areas, like ears and inside the nostrils (I find this makes things look more natural), I sometimes use that small round brush from before.

So how do you get this stick to be blushing on your doll's face? Sandpaper. Put down a paper towel or piece of paper on your workspace (I start out my work with a clean piece of printer paper anyway, which I can use to get brush cleaner off my brush or remove a bit of excess paint). Then, just rub the sandpaper back and forth to create dust. You don't need to make a huge pile. If you're combining colors, just do them over the same spot.

This step is great to do while you're waiting for your MSC to dry. But before you go get your head, WASH your hands! You will have a lot of pastel dust on them and you don't want to get random spots of color on the head.

This picture shows partway through applying blush. I have my pile of pastel dust, and then you can see the little "footprints" leading away from it towards the upper right and then down to the lower right. You tap your brush in the pile, and then keep tapping it on the paper to remove excess. When the only mark you're leaving on the paper is that faint, even color, THEN you're ready to tap the brush on the head instead. If you're still leaving flecks of powder on the paper, you need to tap that off; it will look like you have no pastel on the brush, but you do. If you apply it to the head when there is too much powder, the blushing with come out uneven; those flecks of dust will appear as dark spots.

At first, it also won't look like anything is happening on your head. It's very important to apply blush with as much light as possible. This is important for faceups on the whole - but bright daylight is especially useful for blushing. What looks very faint under artificial lighting at night can look way over the top and very uneven in sunlight. I learned this the hard way! Go slowly with the blush; you will start to see results.

Where do you blush, anyway? That really comes down to personal taste - as does when you stop blushing and call it done. Some people prefer a very faint tinge of color; some like it quite strong. I would point out that the darker you go, the harder it is too keep the blushing looking even. Most "professional" amateurs who do heavy blushing do it with an airbrush, so you should be aware of that. (I own an airbrush but I have not gotten up the courage to try using it on my dolls!)

Personally, I blush starting along the jawline going up the temple and starting to curve up to the forehead. I also blush the other direction, underneath the chin.Then I do along the upper part of the head, but fairly narrow there - this is good for bangless wigs. Then I do something along the lines of "raccoon eyes" around the eye area, extending partway down the nose as well to bring outo the contours. I do a small amount under the lower lip, and also I like to add some shading to the inside of the nonstrils and in the crevices of the ears.

Lips - After four or so different versions of the lip paint, I gave up and went with this. Lips are my problem area. I have not mastered them. There are a lot of ways to do them. You can try using pastels as a base, to get a nice soft edge; but I found this method made the mouth look too "smudged" (when I was doing it, anyway). I did not have a small enough brush with the right kind of bristles for this method. My general tip for a method to try for lips is this - don't start with pink or a similar shade if you're doing a non-girly boy. Start very close to the skin color, and then add some color. If you want to only use paint on the lips, then I recommend doing the base coat as THIN as possible - put a lot of thinner in. This is the best way to keep the lips from looking like heavy lipstick. On this version, over the top of that I did some thin highlight lines by adding white to some of the base color, and also mixed a darker version with some brown for the crevice between the lips.I used a gloss sealant, but I may switch to a semi-gloss or satin since gloss borders being girly.

Eyes - These are really a big issue of personal taste. I like feathery but fairly heavy lashes. You'll find that Volks faceups have very clearly separated, sharply drawn individual lashes. First, I do a base coat on in the inside lower "ledge" of the eye opening in a pinkish tone, as well as the tear duct.Then I line the eyes; for this faceup I used a fairly dark brown, but with a lot of red in it. I do line the upper lid as well, and continue down partway into the tear duct, because I think it suits the shape of this sculpt's eyes. Then I do some very thin lines, fairly evenly spaced, to basically mark out what length I want the lashes where. Then I go between these lines as seems right - in some places I will clean my brush and not knock the brush cleaner off as this causes the paint to flow more and I can get a very faint line to give a softer look. Then I will go over the longer lines again with less cleaner and more paint, to darken them just at the base (so that the lash is darker at the base than at its tip). For the eyelid crease, I get brush cleaner on my brush and pull a small amount of the lining brown back and forth through the crease. I like it faintly tinted, not painted in that crevice. Any excess paint can be pulled to the end of the crevice and cleaned off with a q-tip dipped in brush cleaner.

The last steps happen after the blushing and final coat of MSC has been applied. I do a small amount of silver at the darkest point of the eye on the outer corner, because I find that it opens the eyes up more and gives something of an effect of the rim of the eye being damp . . . I dunno, it works for me XD; I also do gloss the eyelid for the same reason, of opening the eyes up and adding interest. Akio does have applied upper lashes; I use ones made for humans, cut in half and then trimmed a bit. Somewhat of a pain, but it does work and is much cheaper.

Eyebrows - These eyebrows are done with nothing but watercolor pencils. I basically only used my basic brown and got minor variation in color by changing the pressure. I also made them look a little thinner by drawing additional lines with a flesh-tone pencil (which lightens the areas it goes over), and then went over again in a few places pressing harder with the brown. I have tried using templates for doing brows and did not find it worked for me, as they came out too blocky. So now I freehand. I can't really recommend this method completely. ^^; But I will comment that perfect symmetry isn't very human, anyway. When you blush, it will lighten all of your paint/linework; but personally, I find this makes it look softer - a sort of haze over things - so I do my blushing last, not first. Matter of personal taste.

Blushing - Just wanted to say that he IS blushed. XD You can see it slightly around the eyes in this photo. I wanted to keep the blushing very natural and faint this time around as it's been too heavy for my tastes the last few.