Oooo-Ack!

Take back your paints, take back your curls. What made you think I was one of those girls? Unless you have a modicum of accomplishment in this area, please put away your tints, pastels and varnish. It’s so not makeover time. The Bold Doll recalls some of the horrors in the world of repaints.

Let me begin by declaring that I have nothing against re-painted dolls – often sold on the internet and described as OOAK (one of a kind). In fact I am an admirer of the work of many talented repaint artists. Some of the transformations they achieve is quite astonishing.

No, rather I take issue with the repaint artists out there whose energies would be so much better directed towards other pursuits. We’ve all seen them, the creations that are not so much O.O.A.K as Oooo-Ack!.

UGLY SISTERS
Gene Marshall is a particular target. Now sadly out-of-production, the repaint gang still have her firmly in their sights. Probably because earlier vinyl versions be picked up nude relatively cheaply and ready for home surgery. Mel Odom, Gene’s creator, once said “Whenever anyone asks me about repainted dolls, I try to be honest about it… They stop being my dream and become someone else’s”, which is hardly a glowing endorsement for the havoc sometimes wreaked on his dolls. I am especially mystified by zombie-style Genes – everyone to their taste, but why you’d want to turn the most glamorous of Hollywood’s golden age into a gothic ax-muderer is beyond me. It’s quite astonishing what has been done to this doll in the name of repaint art. Some of them look really cross, which is not surprising when you consider what’s befallen them. What is it with the frown lines and the angry eyebrows? Some just look plain constipated, “green about the gills and a stranger to the lavatory” – to quote British author, John Mortimer.

Big lips, impossibly fat lips, lips that seem to take up nearly the whole lower face. Collagen implants rarely look good on people, so why subject our dolls to them? Most fashion dolls have perfectly generous well-proportioned lips, they really don’t need enlargement.

Doll manufacturers spend a huge amount of time getting the look of their products just right and often go through many iterations before the doll is brought to the market place. So why would the acetone dabbers want to wipe off this painstakingly evolved work unless they are sure they are creating something better?

But I do understand that everyone has to start somewhere, and the most experienced repaint artists may have early work lurking in the closet that they would be embarrassed about. My issue is with the bungled attempts that find themselves for sale on the internet. If the original doll has not been improved upon by your efforts, please don’t subject the rest of us to it. Anyone with an eye for repainting a doll should be able to tell easily enough whether the new layers of paint applied has made the doll better than before or considerably worse.

My pet hates are: blobby paint jobs with brushes too thick and paint too hastily applied; eyes that are ill-defined, with mascara done by toilet brush; smeary lipstick that looks like it was put on without the benefit of a mirror during a bumpy car ride. And shading – what’s that all about? A rule of thumb is that if it’s obvious, then it’s badly applied. I can see the point of shading as a theatrical device, and when done well it works brilliantly. For example Gene’s slightly fleshy nose can be made to look remarkably aquiline in the hands of an expert; or, a wide faced doll like Blythe can be given cheekbones without the need for filing and actually re-contouring the face. But any shading that heads in the direction of Boy George’s unfortunate black neck look is simply too much.

Sometimes the doll is got up in curls, ribbons, ruffles and a mass of tulle – as if this will distract our attention from the ghastly makeover that looms above. It won’t

Boy dolls are particular victims of the shading problem. Unless you’re trying to create a drag queen (and this is often an unfortunate result), there’s not a huge palette of colors to play with when repainting boys. So some re-painters really go to town with the shading by way of compensation. A little stubble, maybe, if artfully applied and not splodged on like thumbprints. And can anyone explain the upper lip coated in a darker shade of buff? I don’t understand this phenomenon which is often seen and, at best, looks like smack in the mouth, at worst a bad case of impetigo.

As for anatomically enhanced Ken. Why?

True repaint artists are not interested in a quick fix and will lavish hours of time on their dolls, building up colors and effects slowly, thin layer by thin layer. The eyes will be painted gradually over many stages. For an idea of how this works have a look at Baris’s transformation of the Sybarite Swallow into Pony here. If the desired outcome is not achieved, the true artist will clean off the paint to get back to a blank canvas. When the effect hasn’t worked or has gone wrong, it can rarely be salvaged by piling on yet more paint. Unless the effect you’re aiming for is more Jackson Pollock than Estée Lauder. If this is the effect you’re aiming for – please don’t show me the doll!

The vintage doll world is not immune to the repaint craze. Bild Lilli recreations are pretty common on eBay. An original Lilli, widely acknowledged to be the inspiration for the original Barbie doll, is incredibly expensive – good examples can sell for thousands of dollars – but no one is going to be fooled by some of the poorly executed versions out there. Often a combination of bad technique, poor skills and a staggering lack of research – if you’re going to try to copy a classic, at least have a good look at the original for before you start.

We all recognize the look of a face lift-or-two too many – an appearance you can recreate in front of a mirror by stretching your features tight to see how a little freshen up would look. It rarely does people any favors so why would it work on a doll? It’s truly amazing how some artists reposition and enlarge the features of their subject to sometimes monstrous proportions… you know, how your face looks reflected in a spoon.

I’m always interested to note that many repaint artists listing dolls for sale mark their work as ‘returns not accepted.’ Some of these dolls would give you nightmares, I’m not surprised they don’t want ‘em back again!

THE RED CARPET (OF SHAME)
Celebrity dolls… an excellent guideline is that if the celebrity doll you’ve created bears no passing resemblance to the celebrity, save your time and money and don’t list it on eBay. Another no-no is to produce some random repaint and then decide that it looks a bit like Elizabeth Taylor (for example), it probably doesn’t. There are some hilarious examples listed at any one time. Although admittedly there are some treasures among the trash. But after the laughter comes tears, and I’m always upset that a perfectly good doll has been wrecked in this way and wish I could wipe away the tragedy she has become Sadly it would take unlimited resources to rescue these cosmetically-challenged former beauties. So please do us all a favor and keep your experiments to yourself until they are good enough to be viewed by a wider audience. I want my hobby to be an escape from the everyday humdrum and not a free pass into the freak show of the doll world.

A version of this feature first appeared in Fashion Doll Quarterly magazine in 2012.