Weeping Sado-Madonna, Wip #2

 Someone popped the idea of doing monthly vows of what minis we will be painting. As there were only a few days left of April the obvious choice for me was to finish Sybelle. I failed, of course.

I still have done a lot and once again I tried something new (glaze medium) so I'm happy. The part that I was most afraid of in painting this mini was the latex suit. It is so difficult to make something so little give the same impression as something that completely relies on the reflection of light in normal size. The other good example for this issue is nmm at which I'm still quite crap. I did some research on what black latex really looks like. (strictly scientific reasons, you see...)

So I found these different styles and decided that the shiny but not wet-look is the most reasonable. (second from left) The first, wet-look one is just beyond my painting abilities and the other two would just look like any other black. So now I had to figure out how to reach this awesome effect and I already had an idea how I could pull it off without much effort. I wanted to paint the whole surface dark grey and shade it with black (so far as normal). But then, instead of highlighting, simply apply gloss finish for the supershiny effect.

However, when I was done with the shading it just liked it so much that I didn't want to ruin it with an experiment. I already mentioned that I tried using glaze medium for the first time, I think that helped me make the shading a lot better then I normally could. So instead of varnishing I just kept highlighting it (still with glaze medium added to my greys) until I reached what you see now.

Unfortunately this took me a lot longer then I expected so the mini is still not ready. I added some greys to the stockings to enchance the transparent effect. Done the main gradient on the fan, now I'll just have to pick the frame to make it divide. I painted up the main gradients on the metallic surfaces (rod, little blades on the fan). Still want to further highlight the latex areas, shade the skin/flesh areas a little more (I have noticed that none of my minis have proper contrast on their skin). Finish the metallic surfaces and then start painting rust on them. Add a brown hue to the stocking to make it look more real. After that is all done I can call the mini ready for basing. So no win fro me this month, maybe in May I'll finish what I want...