Setting aside debates about how Barbies and other dolls may have warped beauty standards for decades, can we take a moment to get real here?
A lot of those dolls are kind of fugly. At best, you’re looking at overly made-up face with flat, dead-looking eyes. At worst, you have a mutant version of an actor from a popular movie.
But where most of us may look at those plastic girls with some childhood nostalgia, one artist sees a blank canvas.
Or at least, it’s blank once she’s scrubbed all of that paint off.
Olga Kamenetskaya is a Ukrainian doll-maker who focuses on turning those mass-produced dolls into custom works of art.
In particular, she’s most famous for her repaints of popular lines such as Barbie or Monster High.
Depending on the doll used as a base, the results can be astoundingly realistic or have a sense of surrealism to them.
The surrealism is particularly apparent with the Monster High dolls.
The tiny necks, prominent cheekbones, and massive eyes should make them hard to turn “realistic”, but somehow, Olga manages.
Those eyes ! They’re incredible!
Olga is also happy to share photos of her process on social media.
She also sells in depth video tutorials on her Etsy shop for those who want to learn the art of doll customization for themselves.
Though it’s now her career, Olga began repainting dolls as a hobby.
Besides painting skills, the art form has allowed her to branch out.
She’s taken beauty design courses and even does some work on the side as a makeup artist now.
To her, the key is in the imperfections.
She often avoids perfection and symmetry on purpose.
“I don’t like when the new face of the doll is ideal and perfectly symmetrical, it makes it lifeless,” she told Vogue, “I always deliberately leave some flaw that may not be noticeable to everyone, but [gives] the doll invisible charisma.
But it’s when her dolls imitate the likeness of a real person that things get really amazing.
A lot of movie tie-in dolls look pretty terrible, often because the manufacturers reuse molds from other dolls as a cost-saving measure.
Olga proves that even with a basic mold, she can make the doll look just like the actor.
Like, if I wasn’t telling you this was a doll, would you believe it?
It could be a still frame straight out of Wonder Woman ! Even after seeing the in-progress photos, it’s hard to believe.
Even when she starts with an exaggerated doll model, the likenesses are great.
It’s definitely surreal and a little weird, but this is also clearly Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones .
Her process is about more than just repainting the naked doll face.
After she’s removed all the paint, she remodels the features. This allows her to smooth out the least realistic parts of the doll, like the exaggerated lips.
This process also lets her change the expression if she wants to.
Instead of the pouty “Blue Steel” mouth or a stiff smile, she can create expressions that are more dynamic or realistic.
While she focuses more on female dolls, her male ones are incredible too.
I imagine that they are harder both because of extra details like stubble or beards, but also because there are fewer male dolls to use as bases.
That difficulty doesn’t seem to cause any problems.
I mean, because of the books, you could put round glasses and a scar on any boy and call it Harry Potter, but she went farther by using the movie as a basis.
Like, somehow this Hermione is all Hermiones.
It looks a lot like an exaggerated version of the movie character, but because of the surrealism, it also matches the image of Hermione I had in my head when reading.
Of course, she also tried her hand at fixing those awful Emma Watson dolls.
You know the ones. They were released alongside the live action Beauty and the Beast and the modellers clearly had no idea what the actress looked like.
I don’t know why, but I think my favorites are the big-eyed dolls.
Are they more than a little creepy? Hell yes, but for some reason that makes me love them even more.
I think it’s the eyes.
Olga puts so much detail into them, with layers of paint and even sparkles. The depth they have compared to the original flat paint is just amazing.
If you want to purchase one of her dolls, it’ll cost you a pretty penny.
Each one costs hundreds of dollars and to even have a chance, you need to watch her social media pages. That’s where she’ll announce when a doll has been posted for sale.
My guess would be that any new dolls get snapped up quickly.
Especially if it’s a popular character from TV or movies.
If you want to see more of her work, be sure to check out her social media: Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
