Hey guys! Finally I have managed to finish my first tutorial!
As someone who has always been into survival horror games and enjoys making horror dolls, it was no surprise I quickly came across the need to make wounded or scarred tissue on them. My first attempt back in September 2018 consisted on burning the plastic of the doll's body and just painting on the bloody tissue on the face, which worked semi well, but didn't give me the result I wanted. So after digging up some info online, I came up with this method which I think looks amazing and way more realistic than attempt no. 1!
These are the materials we will need.
A doll, in this tutorial I am using Jane Boolittle
A sealant
A soft manicure sanding block
Some cotton balls, It shouldn't take more than a quarter of a cotton ball for a small project like this
Some glue, I am using aleene's turbo dry tacky glue, but regular white craft glue works just as well
An old mug (don't use your good ones please since the glue can be hard to get out)
Some acrylic paints, I am using Vallejo model color in the colors hull red, Carmine red and scarlet red.
Some chalk pastels, I am using mungyo pastels
And a variety of paint brushes, the smaller the better, sizes I used are 00, 10/0 and 20/0. Remember most of these are gonna get messed up so try to use old ones if you can.
Optional:
Some soft UV resin, it has to be soft since we are gonna cut pieces of it
A UV lamp (or the sun alternatively)
Scissors
Some needles
A bottle of super glue
Pliers
A soft silicone mold, the shape doesn't really matter as long as it's tiny, I used a playing card themed mold for this tutorial.
So let's get started! This tutorial starts with the optional part, but you'll see why in a bit.
First, take your doll and gently sand the parts where you are gonna add the wounds, this is so the materials can adhere better. You don't have to sand it much, just to the point that the top, shiny layer is gone, be sure the sanding block is very fine so you don't scratch up the doll.
I want this doll to have a voodoo doll theme like Cinder, so we are gonna add some needles. Take your super glue, pour it on a piece of plastic or similar surface, I used my mungyo pastels box, wait a couple of seconds for it to dry a bit, and pick it up with a needle, put a drop of it on the arm and start attaching the needles. How many you wanna add is entirely up to you, but I wouldn't do more than three. Hold the needle in place until the glue is semi dry and it no longer shifts around.
Aside from just glueing them to the top of the skin like this to make them look like they went entirely through, you can make some to look like the tips are still inside the arm. For this, take a needle, make a hole on the arm with it, cut the needle in half with the wire cutter bit on the pliers, stick the back half of the needle on the hole you just made, and add generous amounts of super glue, again hold it in place till the glue dries. Do not use this method on the underside cause on that area they are bound to break off like crazy.
I want this doll to have glass shards dug into her skin too, so after you are satisfied with the needles on both arms, take your uv resin and pour it on your mold, if you don't have one you can just spread if on a piece of plastic and cut it up into pieces later, make it sort of thick so the pieces will be more sturdy but not too thick, remember these are glass shards.
My mold has some spades, clovers, hearts and diamonds like those on playing cards in three different sizes, I fill up all of them and then cure them under my portable UV lamp for 5 mins, alternatively you can use the sun.
Once cured, de-mold the pieces very carefully (remember they are tiny and can get lost easily!) And start cutting them to shape to make them resemble glass shards more, I just basically cut off edges and rounded parts. Then using another needle start adding tiny drops of super glue to the arm and glue the shards in place, remember to hold them in place until the super glue is dry like you did with the needles, I added about 6 to each arm cause more seemed like overkill. Again, add them to the top and sides but NOT to the underside.
After that is done, take your needle again and use it to add tiny blobs of UV resin around the bases of the glass shards and needles, remember to add some blobs to the top of the needles that are going through the skin too, be generous with this part, this will make the glass shards and needles way more sturdy. Once you are done it should look something like this:
Not bad right? But not super convincing either, these are supposed to go THROUGH the arms, not OVER them. This is where the cotton comes in.
Take your glue, pour it into an old mug, preferably a broken one that no one uses anymore, and using something like a popsicle stick mix it with some hot water, I don't know if there is a particular ratio, I just eyeball it and hope for the best. The water should look perfectly white though.
Take your cotton, and start tearing small bits away from it, place them over the arm and cover them with the water/glue mixture, remember to cover all of the cotton perfectly.
How much scarred/wounded tissue you want, again, is up to you. I wanted quite a lot on the arms, so I covered most of it. At the very least though, you have to cover around the needles and glass. Keep adding cotton and glue/water mixture until you are satisfied, once you're done, let it dry overnight. Once dry, It should look something like this:
Now it's time to paint! Starting with the mid tone, which is the Carmine red, paint the entire wounded area, it doesn't have to be perfect around the edges specially where the cotton meets the skin, you just have to cover as much as you can, don't worry if you go past the cotton a teeny tiny bit or touch a bit of the glass, blood is messy, it's bound to get everywhere, just roll with it.
After adding the Carmine red, take your hull red, which is a reddish brown color, and start painting it around the edges where the purple skin meets the Carmine red and around the bases of the glass shards and needles. Do this a bit at a time.
Now without cleaning the brush from the hull red, dip it in more Carmine red and start sort of "patting" the paint into where you added the hull red, this is to sort of mix the colors together and create a more realistic tone and variation, you'll see some parts will look slightly more hull red, some slightly more Carmine red, and some in between, that is what we want. Keep going until you finish the whole arm.
Now it's time to add some "highlights" take your scarlet red, which is our lightest tone, and add it here and there, mostly to the parts that are more raised, don't add too much, just a bit. Now like before, without washing the brush, take a bit of Carmine red and "pat" the paint into where you added the scarlet so the colors will mix together, remember to do all the painting steps quickly so it is still wet and the colors mix more easily with each other.
Great! It's looking amazing so far! But we are not done yet. Take your sealant, and give the arms a couple of coats. This should be self explanatory if you are using MSC, but I recently ran out of it, so let's do it using liquitex matte medium and varnish instead. I would highly advice against doing this if it's not with an airbrush, if you don't own one, just get a can of MSC, trust me, it's easier.
Take your liquitex matte medium and mix it with destilled water, it HAS to be destilled water, no tap water. Mix it in a 3 part water to 1 part matte medium ratio. I used .5 milliliters of matte varnish vs 1.5 milliliters of destilled water. This works perfectly to give texture to the arms so the pastels have something to grab on to and doesn't end up shiny or anything. I gave the arms two coats. Remember to spray from a distance and wait 30 mins in between coats to avoid adding too much, which may ruin all the work we just did.
Once sealed, take your soft pastels and your brush, and start "blushing" around the wounds using a mixture of darker red and a purplish red. I am using the colors circled here.
Do this all around the wound, where the purple skin meets the scarred tissue, this is cause the skin around wounds is usually reddish and sometimes swollen, this will also help cover any bits of the cotton you missed around the edges while painting. You can take a make up brush and blush the arms around the joints if you want at this point too. I used a mixture of the reddish purple and the pinkish purple at the end of the bottom row on that picture.
Now, clean your airbrush from the matte medium, and using the same ratio as before make a mixture of destilled water and matte varnish. Add it to the airbrush and give it a few solid coats to protect the arms. Again, DO NOT add too much at once and wait 30 mins in between coats. I will probably add a coat of MSC once I get another can for good measure, but this method is pretty durable too.
And with that, our arms are done!
They look great don't they? I am not gonna add them to the doll just yet cause I need to make her clothes first, which reminds me, you can use this method all over the body, but if you are gonna do it on areas like the legs, make sure to dress the doll first so you don't damage anything while putting them on. Also be gentle when putting the arms back on the doll, you don't wanna break anything now, do you?
Here is another doll I used this method on.
As you can see, she has no glass or needles buried in her, but the method is pretty much the same, only difference is that I first used a Dremel to hollow out her eye socket before adding the cotton. It's also a little bit harder to properly add the color variation since you don't have the cuts as a guideline, but just keep going back and forth between colors until you are satisfied.
Anyways, I really hope you liked this tutorial! Please credit tiny ratcoon's customs if you use it and happy crafting! I can't wait to see what you guys make ❤️
If you wanna help me make more tutorials please consider donating to my Kofi, any donation helps no matter how small ^^
https://ko-fi.com/andreasdollworld
