A sample of Gene repaints...

Gene Marshall is my favorite doll to repaint. She has a face that can be molded with just a small addition of paint and shadow. These are some example of repaints I have sold. I have yet to paint the newer Integrity Genes and Madras. These are all from the discontinued Ashton Drake line.



Some of these were painted years ago and others are very recent. I may have painted over a hundred Genes but it never gets boring. She is a wonderful doll and quite easy to find on the secondary market now. Gene's man, Trent, is also included in the above pictures.



Some of these dolls were done as a commission while others were sold on ebay. Gene is also a doll that I have never tried to reroot. She has amazing factory hair that usually turns out soft and silky once washed and conditioned.




Gene's mouth is also nice for creating an open mouth look. Her eyes are just smooth enough to play with the dimensions. These and other qualities make her a repainters dream.

Then the bigger dollies....

These three above are from private commission work. All were characters from stories the collector had written.



Gene Marshall and Tyler Wentworth dolls became my favorites to repaint. The Tonner doll company was coming out with contemporary and diverse face sculpts that were so much fun to transform. Rerooting these big girls was much more difficult.



Sydney was also a favorite from the Tonner line. She could look incredibly cold or sensually warm with the right paint job.




The doll below named Linda was my very first Gene repaint. She sold on ebay and is named after my sister. I gave her extra smoky eyes and fell in love with Gene dolls from then on....

The beginning....

This post shows some of the first barbie repaints I sold on ebay or did by private commission. This was many years ago in 2002 or 2003.



Later came the My Scene barbies whose large heads gave so much more space for eye detail. This was another chance to try new techniques. Barbies were also easy to reroot as the heads were soft and easy to remove from the bodies.



Mackie face barbies were my next favorite as they had beautifully shaped lips. Those barbies with an open mouth were given teeth. This proved controversial as some collectors loved the teeth and others did not like the look. This is a method I love to do as it really gives a doll's face much more life and realism.



My favorite barbie to work with was the Lea/Kayla face sculpt. I believe it was the freedom of the eye sockets. These faces did not have an outlined eye area as the Mackie face and Teresa barbies did. Once the factory paint was removed new features could be added at the whim of the artist. It was so much fun to see how different she could look.



The hardest part of learning this art was the photography. I experimented with inside and outside lighting. These dolls liked to give a nice glare if the lighting was not perfect. I'm still trying to get better at photos. So far the best results are outside with natural light.



Barbies were the easiest to practice with and it was a lot of fun to see how different little personalities would emerge from the plastic features when my brush left its mark.





Here are a sample of repaints from the start of this hobby. Most were barbies and Tonner dolls. I have noticed that in the beginning my dolls were painted with very dark shadowed eyes.