"My name is Lulemee, which actually is not my real name but my artist alias inspired by one of my favorite movies of all time: Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I am mostly repainting dolls inspired by real and animated characters from the big screen.
Art was always part of my life and is my big passion. Since I was a kid I was drawing and painting as soon as I could hold a pencil in my hand. My dream
was to make my passion into a profession by becoming an artist. When I grew up reality caught me and I forced myself to choose a conventional profession but never stopped dreaming and never stopped painting. Now I am working as a radiologist for living, but art always continued to be part of my life. Even when I went through med-school I found the time to paint in my own little art studio I set in my dorm.
My second passion is the art of animation. I grew up watching the masterpieces by Walt Disney and was amazed how drawn figures can convey that much emotion.
I started to work with dolls in 2010. One night, I had the strangest dream. I was dreaming of a beautiful Snow White doll that looked exactly like the animated character by Walt Disney animated in 1937. The dream was so real and vivid that I started to search for this doll in the Internet the next day. What I found was pretty disappointing, because the dolls looked nothing like the animation with their dead eyes and lifeless smile. I bought one of these dolls and thought to myself that it must be possible to change the doll artistically and to make it look like the doll from my dream. That’s how it all started….
I realized quickly that painting on a 3D miniature surface was completely different than on canvas, but I was hooked.
Searching for help and inspiration with this new art form, I found the amazing tutorial by Juan Albuerne and his beautiful celebrity dolls, all from an era I admire, the Golden Age of Hollywood. And being a huge Audrey Hepburn fan I was inspired to paint realistic portrait dolls of this beautiful woman as well.
One of my main focus lies in dolls of animated characters. Bringing the 2D (or even CGI) animation from the big screen into the real world by transforming a doll into this character by changing their face, clothes and hair is my challenge. What I try to achieve generally, with animated characters as well as with celebrity repaints, is not only to give my dolls a likeness, but also to bring the soul and personality of the figure into dollform. I want them to convey true feelings and to make the observer also feel something by looking at my work.
My repertoire varies from animated dolls specializing on the Limited Edition Disney dolls, to celebrity repaints and fantasy dolls. I call myself a repainter but I actually work on the whole doll which means besides painting the face I also sew clothes, style or root hair, reshape molds, etc.
My art has been featured in several doll- and art web blogs as well as doll magazines. I have contributed about my repaints to an amazing book called “OOAK Secrets” and I am very proud that one of my repainted Audrey Hepburn dolls was chosen for the book cover of an argentinian political novel by Ernesto Tennenbaum “Una mujer unica”.
Through the years of repainting I was very lucky to meet the most amazing artists who became my inspiration, my idols and finally my friends and I feel very privileged to be part of such an incredible group of repaint artists. I know that I still have to learn a lot and I challenge myself every day to be the artist I would like to be. And maybe, someday in future, I will finally be able to live the dream I had when I was a kid: being an artist and being able to do art for living."
Lulemee-OOAK Doll Pop Art
Lulemee's has a fairy tale style of painting. A perfect artist for this project! Her characters are charming, their faces sweet, even when creating human characters such as Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn she manages to infuse the Disney princess into them and the results are always lovely, pure and magical. Lulemee's characters are Emma Swan and Rockabilly Ruby. We can hardly wait to see her version of these two fan favorites!
