#ProjectAdagio: The Darkest Sanhui Ever

[rgv4]

Thank you for the answer amIgo, take the time you need, there is no hurry, the important thing is that everything is fine and the project continues.

Without a doubt, the idea of a black doll is very interesting, in the future, I don't know, 4 or 5 years, I would like to buy another, 92, but this time in a skin color, mulatto, dark brown or black.

Your beautiful Adagio, will help to reinforce, even more, my desire, to obtain an African doll, as I said before, I will follow your thread with magnifying glass, lol, greetings friend.

[Endless War]

Thank you for the answer amIgo, take the time you need, there is no hurry, the important thing is that everything is fine and the project continues.
Without a doubt, the idea of a black doll is very interesting, in the future, I don't know, 4 or 5 years, I would like to buy another, 92, but this time in a skin color, mulatto, dark brown or black.
Your beautiful Adagio, will help to reinforce, even more, my desire, to obtain an African doll, as I said before, I will follow your thread with magnifying glass, lol, greetings friend.

Glad to know you are getting something from this. That makes doing it worth it.

Saturday,
September 21th, 2019.
~1500 hours

Wow its been a month and a half! Sorry for the delay but we're back boys. Time for eyebrows. I like to start doing makeup from the top down. This is for practical reasons. 1) I can rest my hand on the lower, unpainted parts of her face when applying makeup and 2) Since I use powder, if it some spills off and falls on the lower part of her face, it won't ruin previous work. I've learned both of these lessons the hard way.

So my first thought was to try some human hair, glue on eyebrow wigs...



OOOOK, so that looks terrible. Guess the tan backing of the eyebrow wig won't look good against her black skin. Who knew?
But maybe I can paint over the backing in a color that matches her skin tone...
Now to find a color that matches her skin tone:



Number 3 looks like winner winner chicken dinner.
Now all we have to do is paint over....

... it didn't work.

So let's try eyebrow stencils!



Hmm they might be kind of thick but we'll see.



Oh GEEZ! She looks like a monster.
Kill it before it reproduces.
Also, black eyebrows against black skin didn't work.
Again, who knew?!

(Remember when I mentioned the powder falling down? I circled it for ya!)

Only one thing left to do now,
draw them freehand!



Now we're talking.
Not prefect but definitely something we can work with.
The goal here is to do her makeup to simulate her having an inner glow.
Let's move on to the eyes in the next round and see where that takes us.
I promise I won't make you wait another month and a half

[Broven]

It's really great to get this look into your process! I've been a huge fan of your makeup skills forever, so I'm really digging this chance to see your approach.

She's going to be beautiful (hell, she kinda already is). Subscribed, and looking forward to the rest

[rgv4]

Undoubtedly, the customization possibilities of this so black creature are really interesting, surely after a good session of fun, all that skin, so dark, would remain well bleached, lol ....

[lilbitlonely]

Why am I suddenly thinking of those old 70's black-light posters?

[Slew]

Hey EW, I love this. Thank you for being you.

It's really great to get this look into your process! I've been a huge fan of your makeup skills forever, so I'm really digging this chance to see your approach.

She's going to be beautiful (hell, she kinda already is). Subscribed, and looking forward to the rest

[Endless War]

It's really great to get this look into your process! I've been a huge fan of your makeup skills forever, so I'm really digging this chance to see your approach.
She's going to be beautiful (hell, she kinda already is). Subscribed, and looking forward to the rest

Thanks Broven. I'm a bit upset with myself I haven't done something like this before. Its been a pleasure to share the experience with everyone. Glad you are along for the ride!

Undoubtedly, the customization possibilities of this so black creature are really interesting, surely after a good session of fun, all that skin, so dark, would remain well bleached, lol ....

LOL yeah. Unfortunately, her back joint seems a little loose and wobbly. Having heard of other Sanhui's having back problems in the past, I'm a little reluctant to move her much.

Why am I suddenly thinking of those old 70's black-light posters?

Hmm... now you've got me thinking...

Hey EW, I love this. Thank you for being you.

That comment made my day.

I have an update coming later on tonight.

[rgv4]

Friend, I understand you very well, I also got a little scared with my doll.

My advice is that if you do not want to more move that joint, leave it with your ass, tilted, back, it will not look bad, while your wrist is standing and you will enjoy the views when you have positioned your black princess on fours legs, lol, doggy style, greetings.

[Endless War]

Sunday,
September 22nd, 2019.
~0900 hours

OK. Stay with me on this one. We are going to do eyes and the differences between each photo may be VERY subtle.

First, given we want a glow effect, we're going to do a base layer of white/light gray so that all the other layers will "pop"
(That blue circled area is where I like to rest my hand like I referenced earlier)



So you can see, we outlined the eye in the lighter shade.
Heavy makeup would not suit Adagio so we need to execute a
present but not distracting look.
That's what she communicated to me when I took my step back to figure out which direction to go in.
So lets add a shade darker to the middle portions of her eyes to start the gradient



I purposefully moved her hand so you wouldn't think it was the same pic as last time.
Not very noticeable but present. Its going to be important when we start blending.
This is going to be one of our transition shades.

Now, lets add a darker shade to the 3rd fourth of her eye.
If you notice, my general principle is lighter toward the middle and darker toward the outside.
This is common in makeup and contours the eye in a way that our eyes expect to see.
I've tried it the other way around just to be different before, and its not gone well.



Next we'll add a shade of black to the outside third of her eye to add contour and complete the blend.
We've already seen how black interacts with her tone so it should work well for blending.



And now we get out the big fluffly blending brush and blend.
I start from the inside out blending the lighter colors into the darker ones.
Its important to wipe off the brush each pass so that you don't end up with black on the white side.
I've learned the hard way.
And you don't need a lot of pressure.
With good pigments they should blend without you having to press too hard.



Ok so we have the base eye-shadow done on the top.
Now is always the tricky decision whether to add eyelashes or not.
The answer is always yes!
As you can see:



Much better. I elected not to go with lower lashes as
that has a tendency to make her look too "girly".
The top lashes will make her look feminine without looking too "glam"
I think Adagio likes that best.

But we're still not done. One last step to further make her eyes "pop" is to add a layer of the transition shade around her eyes to make them look larger overall.
This will kind of simulate light reflecting off of them when we photograph her so that her eyes look bigger.
Also, a nice layer of the secondary transition shade above a thin layer of black to simulate a tuft of fat under her eye and the "smiling eye" look.
It's not as pronounced on Adagio but worth doing
(I didn't do this all on this step, but is worth pointing out before we move on):



Ok. That covers eyes.
Before doing the lipstick lets choose hair first.
Sometimes matching lipstick with hair can make for a nice look.
We'll see...

[rgv4]

The eyes, they look very natural and elegant look, the side shading manages to convey a subtly direct and deep look, you are very talented, wanting to see the next step, greetings friend.

[Mimik]

This is the point where some may lose heart like:
"She doesn't look like the doll on the website"
But this is where the fun begins.
This is where we discover Adagio...

No lie, I stared at Adagio for 20mins, left and came back and stared at her for another 30mins to get a sense of direction.
But sometimes that's what it takes.
I tend to start top to bottom...

Some of my favorite words ever written on TDF.
Oh, how this resonates.

Adagio is evolving nicely Endless. Personality emerging, bit by bit.

[Endless War]

The eyes, they look very natural and elegant look, the side shading manages to convey a subtly direct and deep look, you are very talented, wanting to see the next step, greetings friend.

Thanks! I'm glad how her eyes came out too. There's one more addition to her eyes but that is a surprise at the end

Some of my favorite words ever written on TDF.
Oh, how this resonates.
Adagio is evolving nicely Endless. Personality emerging, bit by bit.

Mimik! what's up mate! Glad you had a chance to see this thread. I'm SURE you know that feeling. Your work has always had that unique artistic touch that one only gets from taking that extra time to make it personal.

[The Messenger]

Thanks so much EW.
This is truly appreciated!

[Endless War]

Thanks so much EW.
This is truly appreciated!

For sure bro!

Sunday,
September 22nd, 2019.
~1400 hours

Believe or not, this was the most difficult step.

I had the most difficult time deciding which hair looked best on her.
I have a personal favorite, one I wished I had chosen, and one I ended up choosing for OTHER reasons.
Here's what we'll do, I'll leave these here without sharing my personal thoughts
and let you see them for yourself.
I'll later comeback and explain my thinking.
These are the top 5 out of about 20 she tried on.

One thing about wigs however: If you are interested in a glamorous look
or photography you really get what you pay for.
If your girl is relegated to more bedtime duties
then buying an expensive wig may not best suit your needs.
But even then, I'd argue a better human hair wig would be easier to restore
after fun time.

For photos, cheap wigs look cheap.
The caveat is, you don't have to go all out and spend $300 on a full virgin, lace front, human hair wig.
Some synthetic wigs can look just as good if not better for some applications.
Depends on your lady.
In the photos you'll see wigs ranging from $15-$95.

The key thing (and this is going to make me sound crazy but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) is
let her tell you what works best.
It may not even be the one YOU want,
but you'll both be happier if you do.
Have you ever put an outfit or wig on your girl,
that seemed like it should be perfect in every regard,
but something just didn't feel quite right?

The most important sense when working with these ladies
and the one we tend to trust the least
is our sense of feeling.
(not just "touch" but feeling)
Trust all of your senses,
but don't try to ignore your sense of feeling,
because you can't.
It's the one sense we can't ignore.
Ever try to ignore a toothache?
Yeah, how'd that work out for you?

Ok enough philosophy.

So here where the top five wig prospects.
All liked for different reasons.
What mattered is what direction we wanted to go in.
And to be fair, the final decision wasn't
even the final decision:

[Broven]

When Brook arrived here I put her wig on Anna. It looked really amazing on her, imo. In fact, it took me a couple of days of living with it to realize that though it looked great on her, it didn't look like her. Which is to illustrate both your point, and the fact that I'm a little slow when it comes to realizing those types of things. lol

So, with that in mind, my pick would be the first one. She looks very confident and approachable in that style. On a possible negative side, she seems youngest in that one as well. (Not too young, obviously. Just younger.) I have no doubt that my personal tastes are playing into that choice though, however much I tried to let the images speak to me instead of the other way around. And you have an advantage in that you have been spending time with her, so none of us know her at the level that you do. Hairstyle and personality go hand-in-hand.

I'm really looking forward to hearing your what you choose and why. Whichever one you choose, she's going to look gorgeous (as all your girls do).