Megan Meehan, Zombieville denizen and Doctor Z.’s assistant, used to look like this:

As a Sterling Silver Rose Hispanic Barbie head with default hair and faceup, she looked sweet, well-coordinated and generic.

This weekend, after my epiphany that I had to redo Peter, I also came to the conclusion that Megan needed modification. I love the colors and [relatively] subdued application of makeup on her facial screening, so I didn’t want to wipe her face and redo it. I settled for enhancement.

Of course, my concept of enhancement differs from that of most doll customizers’. For female dolls, "enhancement" tends to mean making the makeup more intense, while, for male dolls, "enhancement" tends to mean something more akin to weathering. My enhancement process is more like that of ageing; I add shadows, bags, wrinkles and imperfections to originally smooth and flat complexions. I do this on all my dolls these days. The exceptions, like Flower and Allie, usually have beautiful default faceups that I do not wish to customize. [In the case of Flower, though, I’m going to wipe and redo him eventually.]

Anyway, I enhanced Megan on Saturday with brown watercolor pencil, black watercolor pencil and some black acrylic paint.

I darkened her eyebrows, added forehead wrinkles, shaded her nose/inner eye corners, added my favorite eye bags, shaded her smile lines from the outer corners of her nostrils, darkened her nostrils and outlined her lips. Ideally her lip liner should be purple, but I spent so long perfecting it in black that I’m not changing it, even though it is a bit heavy for my tastes. :p

She used to be pretty in a bland, youthful sense. Now she’s fucking gorgeous and also 10 to 20 years older. I can live with that. I originally thought she was in her 20s, but I never did specify her age.

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