Calligraphy Painted Hair with ReBornFX air dry paints

I still have a lot of practicing to do to get myself to that professional painted hair "realistic" look on my reborns but I thought I'd blog a bit on my journey with painting hair.  One of the challenges I have had in the past was to get my painted lines thin,  being able to control the paint , to go where I wanted it to go and not where it happened to land! If you have attempted painting hair on a vinyl doll head you will probably recognize my challenges with this. Some paints tend to resist the surface causing sparsely painted areas or paint blobs happening and this can be very frustrating.  Another past challenge was thinning the paints to the right consistency to prevent the paints from running and containing the color strength I wanted. Well I have to say I have finally got a method of painting hair with out having these challenges and I am now really enjoying the painted hair process. I still need to practice my patterning but at least I can now have more control over the paint application with out becoming to frustrated.
Here is now my hair painting method that works great for me........

Ok, so the first thing I will tell you is that I am going to use a calligraphy nib to paint with and I (of coarse) I will be using the Reborn FX paints. I can just hear some of the Reborners scream " No no no!!! you will scratch that babies head with it!"  but the truth is, with the special soft nibs I use (from MacPherson Arts and Crafts store)  the vinyl does not get scratched at all. These nibs flex very easily and do not have a needle like point ( more like a small round point)  These nibs do give you very fine or thick lines depending on your pressure points.

The second important information is that I will be using the Rebornfx air dry paints and diluting them down easily to the right consistency for the nibs to hold with out the paints becoming runny. I also found the Rebornfx paints to have good color strength even after thinning. The Rebornfx air paint premixed line now has a few new hair colors you can choose from....

 

I will be using the ReBornFX Dark Ash Brown and the ReBornFX Ash Brown colors in my demo.

 

The vinyl doll head I will be using has been painted with Heat set paints so the first thing I will do is apply the Rebornfx air dry primer on the head where I am going to paint on and then wait for it to completely dry for a few hours. The Primer is important to use as it give a bit of tooth to your surface so the paint doesn't resist or puddle up, allowing for nice smooth continuous hair lines. This technique can also be done on air dry painted reborns before a water base varnish is applied.

Next Step: Plan out your hair pattern.  Here I have drawn on a few lines with chalk as a guidance on where I want to apply the paint for hair sections or tresses.  White chalk comes off very easily and will not discolor your paint or vinyl.

With thinned Rebornfx Ash Brown loaded  onto the calligraphy pen I applied the hair tresses within my pattern guide lines  . I like to work on the top head section first to get a good hair pattern going. If you push down on the pen to much the nib will open and release to much paint, so light pressure is all that is needed. I felt I had more control with using this pen vs a brush. It was also easy to hold and maneuver around. I also got to paint more hair lines with out stopping to load up with paint vs with a fine brush. So I felt is was a bit faster for painting as well.

The next step I did was to take a small brush and load it up with a thin wash of the Rebornfx Light Ash Brown and applied it with in the hair tresses sections. This softened the hair lines and made it look nicely blended into the scalp as well as defined the hair tresses more.

 

 

I then loaded the calligraphy pen with thinned Rebornfx Dark Ash Brown and applied it at the top of the tresses to create shadow and density.

You will notice I am starting to connect my top hair section to the sides now. I also changed to a smaller pen nib to give me some very fine lines on the sides as shown below. I also added a bit of light flesh paint hair lines on the sideburns.

This is how far I have gotten for now. I am liking the density and separation of the tresses so far. This is enough detail for now on the top of the head , so I will now go on to painting in the rest of the hair on the head. Once all the hair is placed in, then I will reassess where I want to add more details, highlights or shadows and then apply.

After I am finished I can choose to seal and varnish with Air Dry Rebornfx mediums or with a heat set medium such as Genesis Satin Medium. Rebornfx paints will withstand the heating process required for heat set paints with out changing color.