I would like to share something with you new artist out there. I have been contacted many times by new artist on where to start. Here is some advice, I started by using a wonderful company by the name of 'Bountiful Baby". They have some very nice inexpensive, beautiful sculpts and all of the supplies that you would need to start reborning. As I progressed in the art, I also collected my LE sculpts. This was with the hopes of reborning them once I felt comfortable with my skill level, which took me about a year and many babies.
Word to the wise, don't ever give up and don't ever compare your work to someone else's. Everyone picks up this art in their own unique way. Some artists may be phenomenal with rooting and some may be better with achieving various skin tones. Some artist may be better at sculpting than reborning. Some may be great at both, but don't ever put your work down or lose confidence in what you are trying to achieve. Keep trying and trying..... I can honestly admit if I had given up after my first reborn, I would never have guessed I would still be creating babies now. I look at my talent as a God given gift. I would never and could never claim this blessing as something that I came across on my own.. I believe he works through me with my hands and my visions in this art :0) I did not mean to get to biblical with it, I just wanted to share how I feel about my art. I hope I am helping some of you new artist out there.....
When I first started and I have told this too some of my doll forum friends before. I felt very alone and had many, many questions and to me at the time there were not enough resources. I did a lot of research. I also joined various doll forums where I took classes and learned many new skills as well. I also experimented a lot and I mean a lot !!!!! Some were good and some were bad, that is how I learn by trial and error. I played around so much and used various techniques to try to mimic my own skin tones which was all self taught.
I remember coming across one of the most beautiful AA reborn baby's I had ever seen created to me. It was a "Welcome Back Taylor" sculpt by Tamie Yarie done by "Pipsqueak's Nursery" Angela Mueller. This little beauty was on the magazine cover of Likelike Doll Magazine April/May 2009. Now we are talking about a few years ago, ( and before my reborning time) but I absolutely fell in love with this little girl she did a beautiful job on her. I admired her shadowing technique she used to make her look so realistic. Hence, I started trying that technique on my babies in the beginning of 2011. Here are a few babies I started the process on, they are all adopted babies from that year. This is just to give you an idea of how I am always learning and progressing......
This baby is Riley who I created, she went to a beautiful family in Texas.
This was Dasmaya, a baby who I won a Middle Eastern Baby Contest for. I believe she may have moved to Virginia. I have had quite a few babies who were adopted in Virginia.
I hope this was a little helpful...... All I can suggest is research, trial and error, and join a few forums. There are some very resourceful and talented artists on most of the boards who may be able to also share some of there wisdom as well.
I have one more entry coming up :0)
