I am back!

I am finally back home from my trip. I had to go to Chicago with my sister for her interview. She applied for working as a teacher in Japan. So I really really hope she gets this job , because it will save me so much money in shipping the items from Japan and Yahoo!Japan. Plus I will definetly go visit her.

Here is some pictures of the "Windy City" (and it really was very windy). The weather was very cold and it snow/rained 75% of the time, but it was still fun.

Don't you just love the fog effect on the top of the buildings? It was right before the rain. Looks cool and it felt even cooler (or should I say colder). At least we got some very good food.

The good thing is that I still have few days free before I have to go back to work. So tomorrow I will get to work on my kits.

Chouun Shiryu Update

For the last few days I didn't had too much time to work on Chouun, but I got some stuff done. As promised, I was doing a beauty salon stuff on her.

Thanks to Ilaria, I got a good reference picture for the eyes (Thank you dear again). The good thing is that I had to paint only one set of eyes, the other face have her eyes closed.

The only thing that is bugging me is that when I put her hair on and her head on the body, it is very hard to see her eyes. I have to really lean under to pick at her face. I think that she will need to be sitting somewhere up higher on the shelves and look down on people.

Also I've been working on her nails. I dicided to stick with natural color, so just some french manicure and she is ready to battle. Looking at the picture, maybe I need some manicure done too.

The last step (the hair) was kind of giving me a problem. I had to repaint her hair twice already. I had to putty the hair a little bit more (the place where the bangs and the main hair meet) and repaint it. I think I am done with that, but I have to double check first.

Also I am almost done with her sword and her shirt colar.
She is almost done, yeah

Mikuru is done

I am so happy, my Mikuru is finally done. She looks like a very easy kit, but I had some problems with her. Her legs had to be repositioned few times, because the alignment of it have to be perfect to put the frog costume on. The costume is removable with magnets, so I can show her nice legs off .
I painted the inside of the suit with shimering green color, so it looks like a silk, and outside with very flat color, so it looks fuzzy. Didn't really got the result I was looking for, but I like it anyway.

For the base, I used a kitchen tile I got in the hardware store. It is very nice, but very very hard to drill. If you ever plan to drill one, make sure you get a very fast and strong drill for hard surfaces, otherwise its not going to work.

I finally desided to get an account at the Photobucket, so here is the rest of the pictures http://s254.photobucket.com/albums/hh107/zasranka1/Mikuru%20from%20Haruhi/

Chouun Shiryu part 2

Finally I got a nerve to work on Chouun skirt. It was accually not too bad, I guess I made it out too be more in my mind then it acually was. It really helps to have the right kind of tools when you do this. I used a very thin masking tape (sorry don't remember the brand) and just went around the skirt. The second row was a little bit harder, just because it had to be more alligned to the first one, but I did it.
This is skirt with only the tape before I painted it brown (chocolade brown with some burned siena shadows). Oh yeah, I painted red first and mask it after.

After the base skirt color, but before I remoded the tape.

After the tape was removed. It still need some touch ups on the strips and some more shadows (pastel).

This is the final skirt with all hightlight, shadows and strips. All done on the same day.

Of course, after finishing the skirt, I just had to see how Chouun will look together. She still need some work, but the lower and middle part of her body is done. The only thing to do is her finger nails, hair, and eyes (regular girls day at the spa)

P.S. If you still didn't figure it out I finally learned how to put onion heads in my blog.

Small update

It is very cold outside right now and there is nothing on TV, so I decided to spend couple of hours in my basement painting.

I like making resin models, I like all steps of doing it, but my most favorite part is painting. You can see how your all previour hard work on fixing the kit is paying off. The kit is becoming alive (wha-ha-ha, I created a monster lol ) So anyway, right now I get to paing two kits at the same time.

Mikuru is almost done. Today I finally attached her head and finished up on touching up her body (that did not sounds right O_0 ). So now the only thing I have to do with her is fix her front part of the frog costume. The seam lines where the arms are attached have to be sanded and repainted.

There is few things that I am kind of dissapointed in Mikuru. She have such a nice sculpted body, but most of it is kind of hidden by the hair or the position of her body. Another this is that I can't fix her to a base permanently because her back part of the frog costume will not come off or on. And I really would like to make the costume removable. Oh well, I will think of something.

For my other project, I got to finish up her shoes. I really love how they turned out. So for now she have her two main bodies, legs and heads ( no eyes yet) done. I am leaving masking the skirt until the last posible minute. Oh, and the hair, must not forget the hair.

I am very luck that I have some free time right now, I know that soon it will be over and I will only get to work on my girls maybe ones a week.

Mikuru part 2

I got to work on my Mikuru today for a few hours. She is coming along very fast now. The only thing I have to remember is not to rush it. I make way too many mistakes when I rush things. I keep telling myself: "patience is a vertue, patience is a vertue, don't touch the body, let the glue dry, patience is a vertue".

For such a easy kit (only about 10 parts) she is acually very complicated. I am trying to make her frog suit removable, so the alignment of the parts have to be pretty much perfect. I had to redo the legs few times, because they would not fit properly into the suit. I think I fixed most of the fitting problems for now and I only have few minor detailes to fix.

I had lots of fun painting the frog suit. It is not suppose to be real frog, so I got to use some of my brightest green colors. The shadows on the frog a little bit over done, but that what I was trying to achive. I really like it.

So for tonight, poor Mikuru is standing without the head on my table and waiting for me to finally finish her up. Sorry Mikuru, not for another 2-3 days at least. I am going to be very busy with other stuff.

Mikuru from Haruhi

Here is another kit I was working last few days.

She is Mikuru from Haruhi anime (sorry can't remember how to spell her name). This is one of the sculpts that I actually like of Mikuru, because usually she looks very trashy.

I love her innocent face and the frog costume. I used some magents for the frog costume, so I can take it off and show her legs :)

Her body is all done, I just need to touch up her underware and glue all of the parts together. The only thing to do is finish up her frog costume. Maybe I can do it tomorrow.

Chouun Shiryu

After my last watercolor commition, I had lots of bottle up energy for resin kits and two days off. So here is some stuff that I have done.

I have this kit of Chouun Shiryu from Ikkitousen. She have this gorgeous flowing hair that just made me buy her. I really like her, but I have dicided that I am going to sell her once she is done. I need to pay some bills.

She is a challange for me just because she have few different features. She have two different bodies and two different heads. I am building her with all of the extra parts, so I will be able to put them together anyway I like it. The challange was in puttying the parts so they all fit together.
Here is some pictures of her two bodies. This is my first kit with bare breasts :) I think they turned out OK.

The next step is to mask all of the strips on her skirt. I am dreading this moments, so maybe I will leave it untill my next day off.

P.S. My stupid blog is acting up on me, so there is no spell check. Sorry about that, but its not my fault (seriously :) )

New watercolor commition

For the last week I was working on a watercolor commition for a friend. This is already seventh portrait I painted for him, and finally my skill with portraits is improving (or at least I think so ).
The background done with airbrush, the rest is watercolors and some watercolor pencils for small details. It is 16x20 inches.

The funny thing is that I had to go and really force myself into doing this portrait. I restricted myself from touching any resin kits until this guy was done. So for a week I was resin deprived. It was very late when I was done with the picture and the next day I had to go to work early. At work, the only thing I could think was that once I get home I get to work on my resin kits. :)

I think I have a problem. I am showing all signs of addiction. Must be the resin fumes.
So here is the result of my next two days after commition was done.