The work is going on in the scale a little bit larger than 1/6. I’ll make removable little clothes & boots for her, she’ll be able to change dress, please one’s eyes & pose for photoshoots – all that I love the doll world for. The costume & image will be the main topic of the next story, and now I’ll tell more about her face peculiarities.

I’ll begin with that the prototype for this doll is a famous Soviet & Russian actress – Elina Bystritskaya. She is an extremely beautiful woman with special dignity, she has a noble face, charming smile & sparkling eyes. A well-informed reader will probably guess that the doll’s name is Aksinya, and I’ll clear this out that one of the most significant roles of Elina is a role of a Cossack woman, Aksinya Astakhova in a 1958 screen adaptation “And Quiet Flows the Don” of the same-titled novel. For this role she was approved by Mikhail Sholokhov – the author of the novel himself.

For a better understanding of the face’s features, I tried not to be in a hurry & have spent some time for research of available film & photo materials, as well as pencil sketches.

Bystritskaya’s mysterious & calm smile became a special hard-to-catch enigma for me. It reflects her strong & forceful character, and by its modesty it highlights the actress’ dignity – as if she knows & keeps something inside that only a few knows.

To embody a real alive face in miniature, I decided to come away from habitual doll-like image and to work in realistic style. To succeed in this effort, one need to observe certain conditions.

First of all, the sculpture of a porcelain cast should found the base, that is together with a special painting technique will give a desirable photographic effect of a real face. It needs to thoroughly work on & sculpt all the volumes, peculiarities of face features & outlines. To pay special attention to proportions of face parts, to keep in mind their visual perception from different view points.
Besides, it’s important to keep & transmit anatomical peculiarities that are often omitted in artistic representations (for example, nasolabial folds or lacrimal grooves), but which are present in humans. Also, we may recall that a human face is not ideally symmetrical, and while standing at the mirror you’ll see different expressions if you close alternately right and left sides of your face with your hand.

To understand and embody features, I was basing on photographs that, in my mind, reflect unique face characteristics better.

My Aksinya’s face represents a collective image of Elina Bystritskaya’s unique features as I see them myself. The collage shows the finished porcelain face before the firing:

To achieve hyperrealistic texture I used multi-tone, multi-layer painting technique: here I draw pores, imitate uneven coloring of human skin & highlight its imperfections. The following macro photo captures the fragment of the face that is about 16 mm (5/8″) in height.

To bring the forethought vision to life it took me 8 painting layers. The process is slowing significantly due to the need in firing many additional test pieces – to control tints & to check the colours & synergy of mixed paints after firing. But the result really pays off.

With each layer the face is slowly coming to life, gathering details, beginning to show its character. And then at some point not you, but your doll begins to gaze at you. This process inspires & captivates me sky high each time I work with paints & brushes.

Realism of sculpture & the porcelain’s special texture, completed by the uneven painting with subtle transparent layers allow to achieve resemblance of macro photographs of the doll face with photographs of a real human. But the only difference is that this human is just 33 cm (13”) tall.

The doll’s eyes are a very significant element to me – I was craving to embody a profound and penetrant gaze looking into the soul.

They say the eyes are the window to the soul. Given that one embodies eye-balls in sculpture correctly & precisely, magic with painting will work out, and then the eyes will spark & the face will come to life.

Realistic technique in small scale demands precise rendering in painting thinnest single hairs of eyebrows & lashes, lip wrinkles. When my eyes are not sufficient, I use optics to ease my work. The eye iris diameter is just 2 mm, shown in the photo below.

I’ve owned some samples of fur for a long time & they were left unused until recently when I decided to apply them while making the New Year greeting card. This experiment has grown into a small photo-session in “à la russe” style.

Now when Aksinya’s face is finished, I’m setting off on a captivating journey with fabrics, laces & beads! Here are some samples of materials I’m going to use for the costume.

More photos in good quality can be seen in my gallery at Flickr.

I have the most devoted feelings for Sandro Botticelli’s paintings and maidens pictured in them. Their images hold so much depth, dignity, tranquility and wisdom, so that sometimes it’s impossible to tear myself away from their faces and I can contemplate them for hours.

There was no limits for my joy when I got to know that my client’s favourite painter was exactly Botticelli, and she dreamt of having a doll that embodied characters from his paintings, and an especially intimate one for her as well as for me was the character from “Nascita di Venere” (1482—1486) “Birth of Venus”. The client’s offer to bring a similar character to life encouraged me, it was incredibly pleasant to work on this doll and she inspired me like never before.
As you might guess, the doll’s name gives a hint to another well-known painting of Botticelli’s – “Allegory of Spring” (“Primavera”).

I used a light tone of porcelain for Primavera – pale, almost white skin gave her the particular tenderness and elegance incident to classical images.

Facial features of Botticelli’s Venus are very different from the face mold “Taiga”, thus to get more similarity with Venus the decision was made to deeply modify the face sculpture right on a porcelain cast. Modifications affected all the areas: eyes, eyebrow ridges, nose, lips, cheeks and cheekbones, chin. Primavera captivated me to the core, and the strong emotional rise from contemplating Venus’s painting was helping me to embody the beautiful goddess’s facial features in a porcelain face.
One may judge the difference between “Taiga” (on the left) and Primavera’s (on the right) faces in the following photos.

To imitate pictorial art, I’ve chosen warm colour gamma while painting Primavera and have made very soft and delicate tone transitions. Due to multilayered painting of the doll’s eyes, they look alive and deep. What’s interesting, depending on the view angle Primavera’s look appear to be a bit estranged and reflective as Venus’s one, or piercing and even a bit sly, for example as in this portrait.

Botticelli’s Venus has an utterly exceptional hairdo: short wavy locks at the front near the face gradually turning into gorgeous thick locks coming down to the knees. I tried to realize this romantic image by imitating a similar hairdo with gradual change of length for it to look natural and realistic. One can see the result in the following photograph:

Primavera’s second wig represents a Renaissance era hairdress. It was inspired by one of Botticelli’s canvases as well, depicting the artist’s eternal muse Simonetta Vespucci. I’ve incorporated certain changes into this hairdress to my taste, and some of them were dictated by the wig’s small scale. For this work beside hair I used some other kinds of materials: coral beads, glass beads, silk ribbons, feathers, accessories.

At some moment while reflecting on authenticity of the character I was creating and wholeness of its representation, I decided to paint a background with brushes that corresponded to the doll’s spirit and represented the atmosphere of “Birth of Venus”. For the sake of similarity with tempera painting I used artists’ acrylic paints.

This canvas was used for the doll’s photo-session and making a photo-painting as well.

Primavera has already left me and now she is in caring hands of her new owner (to whom I want to say a special thanks for a chance to touch the sublime and to do the least thing I can to pay my tribute to one of the greatest and best-loved artists in the history of painting).

This was a long and interesting work, and Primavera means much to me in the artistic way as well as in the technical one – while working I tried new techniques and materials, and this experience being so priceless for me will be used in future.

In conclusion, I present two art photographs of Primavera to you under a common title “Sensual renaissance” – as an expression of flaming sensuality and eroticism of the Renaissance era.

You can look at other photos of Primavera in her gallery.

While working on this series I’ve rethought the breast’s sculpture. The first version of this part was bothering me – I didn’t like some moments in the anatomical aspect. I wanted to come to sculpting of a new breast more thoughtfully with all my acquired experience, and as a result to come closer to a more anatomically correct and realistic sculpture.

The new model of breast is presented to you by the last doll of the first Familia mini-series (she was completed in December 2014).

For this wig I used wavy hair with small curls. Totally, I’ve made 5 wigs for this doll presenting different characters, among which I can point out one with white hair colour turning the girl into a gorgeous platinum blonde (in the photo below, other photos can be seen in Flickr gallery).

Currently I’m continuing to work on individual orders.

To reflect the main ideas of Dea Vivente I needed a logotype – elegant and refined, but also simple and clear at the same time.
I began working on the logo long ago, and little by little I was moving towards its perfect (to my mind) representation. I draw different sketches, there were many tries, observations and thoughts…

One of the ideas was to picture a doll’s figure in Vitruvian man’s pose from the Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing, as a symbol of harmony, well-formed proportions and the human body’s beauty. To link this idea to the brand, a woman’s figure in the logo should have repeated Dea Vivente dolls’ silhouette. To draw the body form I took many photos of the doll – Dea posed as a model for me. In the following photo she is lying in one of the poses, and then you can see a sketch drawn by hand from her silhouette:

Later I stepped away from direct reference to Vitruvian man, and the logo evolved in a new image of the “living goddess”. And today I proudly present it to you:

Two variants of the logo visually differentiate doll’s series: Dea Vivente woman in a long dress that makes her figure statuary and majestic is the main logo for porcelain dolls in unique characters. The nude goddess image is for the series of nude porcelain dolls (Dea Vivente Familia).
Circle represents wholeness, unity and infinity. Biological forms ‘entwining’ the circle hint at inner connection between human with nature.
For the logo I’ve chosen a subtle and serene tone of the colour between blue and violet. Both colours reflect the main essence of Dea Vivente in the best way possible: blue is a colour of peace and universal harmony, tuning to the sphere of high feelings; violet is a colour of reverie, inner concentration and melancholy, leading to inner extension and uniting body and spirit.
I’m content that Dea Vivente has a logo now, and I’m very happy that I’ve completely succeeded in reflecting the essence of my dolls in it. Stay tuned for a new doll’s pictures with it!

I continue working on the doll, and little by little, I put my ideas into life. While working on the doll image, I often imitate it by putting different comprising elements to the doll, and take mock-up photos to be sure I’m moving in the right direction, and if it needs something else to add or change in the original idea. As a rule, this process really draws me in, and I can contemplate a future doll for a long time, re-creating the image from my head into reality, to feel deeply the image and to “live” with it. In the following photo, I put locks of hair to the doll to imitate the hairdo.

The face painting is still in process here. I’d thought up a bright image for Gemma, thus the make-up should have been appropriate. I was making such a rich and saturated painting of lips and nails for the first time, and as for the lips, it was important to me to get a combination of a quite dark cherry- burgundy colour with a very moderate satin finish. There are many nuances and tricky peculiarities in work with bright red colours, but in the end I’ve succeeded with this task.
For the image I’ve chosen the ‘bob’ hairdo with a slightly shortened fringe. It gives Gemma’s face and eyes openness and highlights her character’s naughtiness and the slight female cunning. The photo shows the wig in process before the haircut. Black hair colour really suits her!

And here is the ready doll’s portrait. Gemma is quite a complicated persona, she likes to be in the center of attention for sure! She adores glance and shining, so she loves putting on expensive jewelry with stones.

I got interested in the idea of combination of porcelain with jewelry inlays of artificial gemstones about 2 years ago (remember my sketch?), and at last I’ve succeeded in putting it in life successfully. Gemma wears a set of necklace and bracelet incrusted with outstanding Swarovski Zirconia gemstones. They highlight the girl’s brilliance beautifully, as well as the black filigree of the jewelry looks marvellously on her tanned body and complements her fatal image perfectly.

Also, today I’m presenting new feet for high heels to you.

I like the look of female high-heeled feet very much, they have something magnetic. Probably partially because high-heeled footwear that implies such bended feet, adds femininity and makes legs more graceful and elegant. Besides, these feet are so playful!

What is remarkable, I’ve succeeded in making a good balance, and the doll can stand on her toes without a backing. Gemma demonstrates it perfectly in the first photo, balancing playfully on my working table. And no tricks with strings!
The rest of the high-heels photos can be seen in the Flickr gallery.

As the work on Gemma is not complete, she will take a bit of rest being a nude, and before setting about to her outfit, I will finish the last girl of the current mini-series of nude dolls Familia.