Lately I have noticed a trend in popularity where many reborn doll artists paint hair rather than root the dolls head with mohair.

Rooting a doll is a long and arduous task and probably the most difficult part of reborning.  It involves rooting each individual hair into a doll head until a full head of hair is created.  It takes quite a degree of skill to do this correctly.  The crown, hairline and sides have to look natural.  Also the hair must be evenly fine rooted to make sure it also looks comparable to a real baby.

Painting the dolls head is the other option.  This involves using fine specialist brushes and various shades of paint to create a three dimensional look.  Just like rooting mohair,  the hair still must be painted to look natural.  I have been impressed by some of the reborn babies created with painted hair and its definitely viable to create a lifelike reborn.

 Below is an example of a reborn doll with painted hair. (not by myself)

There are pros and cons with both methods of applying hair.

Painted hair doesn’t need maintained in the future and always holds its style.  It is much quicker making a reborn baby with painted hair.  This can make dolls more affordable to collectors due to less time costs.  Trouble is painted hair might never be quite as natural and realistic as rooted mohair and the design of the reborn has to be limited tovery short hair.  When it comes to having interaction with your reborn you can’t style, brush or change the hair taking some of the fun out of collecting dolls.

As previously mentioned mohair takes days to properly root into a dolls head.  Also mohair can become unruly and just like any hair style needs maintained.  Other than this mohair in my opinion is still the ideal option to create the most realistic reborns possible.  I understand why painting is getting popular, but is still down to the artists ability and how well they can do this. 

So to conclude this post, I will continue to root until I feel painting hair really is as lifelike as mohair.