[Den]

Originally Posted by Kaderin Triste

Awww. Bummer!
I don't know how common the one she wants is. Hopefully fairly common. I haven't really bought dolls in like 4-5 years (because I realized I was never going to display them, so there was no point in buying more) so I haven't kept up with them for a while.
Although the Venus dolls have the perfect skintone for one of my characters so I wish I had bought one of those even though I can't do any of the repainting that I would need to.
XP
I used to browse Etsy for people to make custom repaints, but they all charge up to $200-300 depending on how much you want done. And I don't think I've seen any for cheaper than $150.
I mean...I can understand charging for time, labor, and supplies...but that much seems a bit excessive for repainting such a small doll...
*shrug*

It's because it takes a lot of prepwork and it is actually very labor intensive, and it can take awhile to get everything done, especially really complicated things. Using the $150 as an example, after you take out the cost of paints, sealer, pastels (in some cases, chalk pastels are used for certain effects), and miscellaneous supplies (paper towels, water, etc), that leaves anywhere from $80-120.

Depending on the work being done, and the artist, it can take anywhere from eight to almost 48 hours for a faceup/repaint to be done. Sometimes, it's even longer. That's anywhere from four to six hours a go of sitting, hunched over a desk, doing very detailed and fine work, with a lot of risk of eye strain.

This means, depending on how complicated of a faceup/repaint the client wants, most doll artists might not even be making minimum hourly wage on one job.