Thank goodness for the powerful logistics system.
Thank goodness Zhuxi Town was in a region with free shipping on almost everything.
The tools and materials Shen Le ordered started arriving one after another on the third day. The handheld mini electric sander was especially useful. He attached some sandpaper, pressed the switch, and it began spinning with a whir. When he pressed its one-centimeter sanding head against the puppet's head, just a few rotations turned the peeling paint into a fine cloud of dust that drifted away and slowly settled.
"Ah... The power of machinery really does far surpass human strength..."
First, he used coarse sandpaper, then 400-grit sandpaper, then 600-grit. On flat surfaces, he used sanding heads one or two centimeters in diameter. For fine details, like the eyebrows, eyes, nose, and lips, he switched to a five-millimeter head, carefully guiding its side along the grooves.
As the puppet's rough, dull surface gradually grew smooth and even, and finally developed a soft sheen all over, Shen Le's features relaxed into a faint smile. In just one morning, he'd sanded and polished every part of the puppet from top to bottom.
Once he'd finished sanding, Shen Le picked up a rag, dipped it in crack-resistant glue, and coated the puppet all over to keep the wood from splitting. Then he lifted an air gun and rotated the puppet as he blew the glue dry, so it wouldn't pool in any corners.
"Whew, whew... Repairing wood is really hard on the hands..."
After blowing the glue dry, Shen Le washed his hands and applied hand cream. He interlaced his fingers and rubbed them together, shaking his head helplessly. Even with gloves on, glue could seep through when you were applying it. In the end, the skin on your hands still had to take the damage.
His mentor's hands were rough and cracked. If you didn't know better, you'd think he was a construction worker when he held them out to shake someone's hand. Every time the senior sister in their group finished working and rubbed in hand cream, she looked heartbroken. Good thing Shen Le had the Magic Copper Piece. Otherwise, after doing this work for long enough, he'd be too embarrassed to shake a girl's hand!
"Hmm... Even if the puppet is a pretty young lady, a puppet is still a puppet... I still have to take care of my hands while I work... All right! Time to pamper this young lady's skin! Time to add some color!"
Color correction and other such techniques were essential skills in wood sculpture restoration. Shen Le had become thoroughly adept at them during his graduate studies.
He didn't even need a palette. He spread out a sheet of aluminum foil and started pouring paint onto it. He'd pour out a blob and take a look, then switch to another color and mix them a few times before taking another look.
After mixing two or three times, he had a perfect match for the puppet's surface. He picked up his brush and painted it on.
"So you really can't just buy rosewood furniture, rosewood tabletops, or rosewood carvings without knowing what you're doing." As Shen Le watched the paint cover every cracked, repaired, and dovetail-tenon joint beneath his brush, he sighed from the bottom of his heart.
"If you're not an expert, you have no idea whether you're paying for an intact piece or a solid block of wood that's been cracked, broken, or rotted and then repaired. You can't tell with the naked eye at all!"
With a brush in one hand and a high-powered hair dryer in the other, he applied the paint quickly and dried it just as quickly. To make it look realistic, he used a fine brush to paint in the wood grain after drying the surface, then sprayed on the wood's mottled patterns with an airbrush. Finally, he polished the repaired spots until they were indistinguishable from the surrounding wood. You couldn't tell the difference with the naked eye!
"All right, young lady. The repairs are done. Now it's time for makeup. Wait just a little while—I'll practice on some other heads first!"
You had to admit, thanks to modern mass production, some things were incredibly cheap.
Take the BJD Doll in his hands, for example. A junior schoolmate had bought a few during their graduate studies. The cheaper ones cost five or six hundred yuan, while the expensive ones could cost over ten thousand. But how much did you think one of the blank heads he'd bought for practicing makeup cost? They had nothing on their faces except two holes for the eyes.
Nine yuan and ninety fen!
Buy four and shipping was free, dear customer!
The doll-head shop also sold a complete makeup kit for sixty-eight yuan. It came with twelve colors of pastel powder, six colors of acrylic paint, black and red water-soluble colored pencils, a double-ended makeup brush, a fine-line brush, basic brushes, a craft knife, gloss varnish, matte protective varnish, thinner, eye putty, white glue, makeup remover pads, cotton swabs, a palette, and all kinds of other tools.
They even threw in a random practice doll head, a random pair of eyes, and a random pair of eyelashes. It wasn't quite true that they had everything you could want—there was no end to the tools you could buy—but for a beginner, it was basically enough!
With a full dozen blank heads to practice on, Shen Le didn't hesitate to get started. First, he sprayed on a layer of matte protective varnish, then picked up a makeup brush, dipped it in some shaved-off pastel powder, and added color to the doll's face. He brushed a light pink over the cheeks, forehead, eye sockets, ears, mouth, and tongue...
What?
Didn't know how to draw?
Come on, there were so many tutorial videos online these days. Watch enough and practice enough, and you'd learn eventually!
Doing makeup was both difficult and not difficult. First, you needed some drawing skills, and Shen Le had more than enough of those as a graduate student specializing in ancient architecture restoration.
The other thing was practice. With plenty of materials to work with, Shen Le could relax and just get started.
"Ah! I put too much on! Went outside the lines! Wipe it off and start again..."
"Wipe it off and start again!"
"Wipe..."
"Finally, it's done. Spray on a layer of matte varnish, then keep painting!"
"Ah, here I am, Shen Le, without a girlfriend and without ever having done my girlfriend's makeup. I've never even worked as a makeup artist at a convention. And the first pretty young lady I've ever done makeup for turned out to be a puppet!"
As expected, the first doll head was a complete failure. The second failed, the third failed, and the fourth failed...
It wasn't until the sixth that Shen Le finally decided it looked good enough after turning it this way and that. Then came the next step...
Shen Le carefully reviewed the puppet's makeup, which he'd recorded beforehand, and compared it over and over with the image in his memory. At last, he picked up a water-soluble colored pencil and began sketching on the doll head. Willow-leaf eyebrows, apricot-shaped eyes, peach-pink cheeks, and vermilion lips. Most striking of all was the cinnabar mole at the corner of her right eye, glistening with unshed tears and impossible to forget.
"It still doesn't feel quite right... So moving something from 2D to 3D really isn't that easy... I'll wipe it off and try drawing it again..."
He drew, erased, drew, and erased again. Even though water-soluble colored pencil was easy to wipe off, after dozens of sketches, the doll head still bore marks that wouldn't come off. Fortunately, the last version finally looked good enough. Shen Le picked up the eighth doll head and began his first proper attempt at applying makeup.
"Pretty young lady puppet, please help me get it right quickly! The sooner I finish drawing, the sooner you can get your beauty back~~~"
After spending the whole day drawing, Shen Le's back ached, his stomach growled, and he had no choice but to go out in search of food. He wandered around at random and, before he knew it, had ended up by the apartment building where children took erhu lessons. He hadn't gone far when the sound, even worse than sawing wood, started up again.
Shen Le's cheek twitched. Without hesitation, he turned and walked away. He crossed the zebra crossing and was almost out of sight at the intersection when a loud shout suddenly came from a distant building behind him.
"I wasn't lying! I really wasn't lying!"
"I'll prove it to you!"
"Bang!!!"
"Someone jumped! Call 120—"