I'm often asked how I paint faces of dolls and if I have a tutorial. I have not matured to create a complete and payed tutuorial, and there are many understandable and accessible materials on Livemaster, but decided to share and show the main steps of work — how I do it.

First, I make sketches on paper:

Below, you can see the tools and materials that I use — synthetic brushes of all sizes, dry pastel and oil acrylic paint.

Make the sketch of the face on the head with a pencil:

Draw the contours with a pink and brown dry pastel pencil, shade them with a brush, outline the shadows:

Draw out the contours with a brown pastel pencil, emphasize the nose, chin and corners of the lips with a fire brick pencil.

Shade and soften the lines, so that the colour transition was smooth.

Paint the whites of the eyes white.

Add ivory in the corners of the eyes.

As the doll is blue-eyed, I paint the irises of the eyes blue.

Paint the middle of the eyes blue, making a smooth colour transition.

Lighten the irises by adding white.

Add a drop of black in blue paint and mark the location of the pupils and the shadow under the eyelashes, shade the corners of the eyes with a practically dry brush, making the stains light blue and white on the irises.

Paint the pupils black, the contour is not clear, add some black 'rays' from the pupils, dab the highlights white.

Outline the lips with a peach dry pastel, apply dry pastel to paint blush with a mop.

I paint the contours brown acrylic with a very thin brush, draw eyebrows and eyelashes. Coat the eyes with acrylic lacquer, but a colourless nail polish would be fine, too.

Paint the eyelids, nose and lips with white pastel pencil. Fix the painting with a spray varnish.

Here's the result:

I would be glad if this tutorial will turn to be useful :)