I call her “The Dreamer”. While it is not the newest work, I think I did her in 2019 but I realize I haven’t shared her with you! I made her for myself, because I found an occasion to share my love for the Japanese Decora style of Tokyo fashion.
The Dreamer
The Dreamer
The Dreamer
The Dreamer
The Dreamer
The bust is based on a 12″ full-figure statue from Mixed Dimensions – the Collection, scuplted by Gilman Louie, cast by Benathai and converted by me. This is a unique figure, not available elsewhere.
If you are interested in buying it from me, contact us about it.
This unique model belongs to a larger series of actresses on chairs. It was a private project of a collector, who designed the models in DAZ Studio – a software application for designing 3D characters.
I and my friends treated ourselves to some Funko Pop figures for repainting. At the end of the post I will show you all of those that we have done until now, but in this article I wanted to show you how easy and what huge fun repainting Funko Pop figures is! Maybe it’s not clear from the picture and a video would make this easier to imagine, how easy it is!
Here’s my version of Pennywise, and it was fun to paint!
Before repainting Funko Pop Pennywise…
What was the impediment for me? I couldn’t separate some parts, but maybe I was too gentle with some of them. For example I mean the balloon:
I cleaned it with sand paper, but this step is necessary only if you are a modeler. 😉 So if you are a modeler you probably have some sculpting putty, and you fel the need to add some texture ;-)
I did, and I had Milliput:
From this moment I started painting, and I think that in the beginning it’s important to add information that I worked with an airbrush. I know that people who don’t have airbrushes use pastels, but as this is my main tool at work, it was easier for me this way.
Let’s start repainting the Funko Pop!
First I put my base layer to the forehead and to shadows, which gave me some underpainging and shaded wrinkles.
Why didn’t I paint the whole face with this color? To cut time of work – this way I didn’t have to waste time to apply a lot of layers to rebuilt the color of the face, as the original color was acceptable as the base color for me.
These are the paints I had on my table, but I think any white and dark gray would be just as good.
I highlighted and sharpened the cracks on the forehead with a brush and used Contrast Paint Flesh Tearers Red to paint the bloodshot eyes (I misread the name as “Flesh Tears Red” and thought the name obliges :-P)
While repainting I focused on the head because this is the most important part, which makes the biggest difference. This is what I like in Funko Pop figures - their proportions! On the other hand I don’t like empty Funko Pop eyes, but you can’t have everything. I liked the scary look in the It movie, and I painted it in 5 steps.
The eyes
The first, as you saw it, is to add bloodshot red eyes effect on whites and painting some broken red lines.
The second one is to shape the eye.
The third is to add highlights on the top of the lower eyelid. In order to do that with an airbrush I had to mask the eyes.
Many miniature painters don’t address the subject of inspiration or references, but in fact they are very important to their creative process. First, they help to imagine details, then it also helps to make progress.
How I process inspiration and references
For me this is the most important, because usually I mostly know what mood I want to achieve, I can feel the main colors, I’ve got the main picture – a leitmotiv. But to make the figure deeper, more believable, I look for more details. I sincerely encourage you to create your own reference base for your models.
Let me explain how I processed my inspiration for the Babayagha, the Black Mother model from Karol Rudyk Art.
Babayagha, the Black Mother (more photos at the end of the article)
Babayagha, the Black Mother
“A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest… because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.” Terry Pratchett
This is the leitmotiv that I had in my Pinterest folder with cool themes for future reference, and it was obviously the connection for me.
Basic inspiration for the face
As you can see, my model is modified and has four hands instead of the original two. Ths idea came up during a conversation with my friend Benathai.
I checked where I would like to put light on model:
My tests of various lighting directions for Babayagha
I completed selecting the colors…
Now you see how professional it was 😉
…. and looking for details:
The most difficult part is painting the face. That is why I was looking at for pictures of actress or a public person. Especially if you are a beginner in painting faces, thanks to this you can find many shots of such a person and create a character study.
This time my inspiration was Emma Watson:
Emma Watson as inspiration for Babayagha? Who would have thought? 🙂
So now, having all the refrerence images collected, I could start painting and you know what I came up with. 😉
More pictures
If you want to see some more pictures of my Babayagha, here they are:
I hope to have a chance to paint more of Karol’s models in future. 🙂
So we finally arrive at the last part of the description of my repainting Triss Merigold. This time we will take care of her leather corset and base, and the model will basically be done. 🙂 If you want to check the previous parts, here is part 1 and here is part 2.
Repainting the leather corset
So yeah, there have been some questions about the way I painted the corset. Well, I am not sure if it is the proper name for the piece of her clothing, but let’s just go with it. 😉
Basics for my leather painting
The whole painting thing was pretty straightforward, pretty similar to the process described in the section about repainting skin. You can look it up there if you haven’ yet.
See, similar method here – started with underpainting, too.
You wanted to know how I achieved the effect of worn and weathered leather. I’m always glad to share my experience with the community, but answering everybody individually becomes time-consuming and monotoneus. Because curious painters are my favorite kind of people ;), I will try to make your day with this article.
Test board. Nothing fancy. Just colors, numbers and some curly thing. 😉
Testing
I started working on the corset with a test board. I tweaked the color of my paint and checked the effects. Here are the paints I decided to go with:
Just because you don’t want to paint over things you have already done or simply want to keep some surfaces clean, you shouldn’t ignore masking. Once you’re ready, you can start painting!
Here you can see the colors put to use on the model already:
And on the back:
Pose carefully, look fancy. Even when being painted 😉
Applying colors
And here you can see the lightestcolors being applied on the front, but this is where the real fun begins…
Now I started testing methods of achieving this cracked, weathered look of worn leather. On the test board, obviously. Not risking the model yet!
I got the first satisfactory result from Vallejo Crackle Medium, which turned out great. I eagerly repeated the process on the corset and…? Nothing, as far as I could see. I got really suspicious if the Crackle Medium is not a capricious slut. 😉 So I told her she’s an energy vampire and I tossed her into a black hole. Don’t make me apologize for this! 😀
The culprit. There is no love between us!
Problem solved!
The next successful test was made with an effect presented to me by Rejven, my team-mate. It was originally a way to achieve marble effect and uses metal wool. You flatten it and use as a stencil for airbrushing. If you try this method and initially fail, don’t get discouraged. 😀 I only appreciated my wool after a few attempts, and it was the best when it got all glued with paint.
It’s no crazy alien being attacking Triss. This is the metal wool I used 🙂
I applied a mix of varied intensity and color onto light base coat. Usually starting from lighter and going to darker ones. See it here:
Check the weathering on her leather bra part. That was really the effect I was going for!
See the weathering. Shaping up as planned!
Working on different parts of the leather, moving the wool to different parts of the model….
No, it’s not hair on her chest. 😀
Here’s how it looked on the lower parts of the corset:
And the darkest layers bring out the most of the weathering effect, creating the old leather effect:
Finishing touches
Finally I applied a bit of visual separation of the trimming and decorative stitches with my paintbrush:
That’s more or less the finished effect.
So that’s basically the whole process. For me the effect was completely satisfactory!
Repainting the base
This model’s base is boring but I had the impression that the wolf sculpt has some potential and can be interpreted in many ways. I decided to go with metallized rock effect. Thanks to the deep sculpt it didn’t require much more than using my airbrush nearly in parallel with the base and emphasizing the volume a bit. It must have been my favorite silver from Vallejo, which is 77.724 Silver.
I did the light reflex in the eye with Metallic Medium from Vallejo applied with airbrush. Then I covered it with a turquoise mix of inks. It’s important to use transparent paints to tint metallics, as they will not make surfaces look flat, but only saturate them with colors.
The next thing to do was using a paintbrush and black paint to paint cracks and grooves around the eye.
I colored the silver here and there by airbrushing some brown ink, and then I covered everything with clear varnish.
And this is what it looks like now:
The model is not finished on the photo, but the base is! 🙂
Done! My thoughts?
I hope I managed to encourage you to buy some statues and proved that they can really look good if you only put some time into upgrading them. Many of them were created by top sculptors, who are paasionate about capturing personalities of our favorite characters from games, comics or movies. I’ll gladly get myself a few more to enhance their looks.
I appeal to you that you don’t settle for the standard, mediocre, factory paintjobs, because it can only be better than that 😀
Now I am compiling a gallery of pics of the finished model, which I will share with you soon!
