This was produced as a commission for a chap to give to his girlfriend as a gift and the brief ran vaguely along the lines of: a fairy with bee-wings (NOT butterfly wings) and not a skinny standard fairy. Other than that I had pretty much free reign to do what I wanted. After some thought I came up with the idea of her sitting on a mushroom which gave me the chance to play around with two characters at once.
A chunk of metal rod and a plastic disc started the shape of the mushroom so I has something solid to put her on. On the first pass at the mushroom, I was trying to get something of a Brian Froud vibe going, with a grumpy looking mushroom along the lines of the goblin faces from ‘Labyrinth’ but ended up toning that back a bit. The fairy had a simple metal armature blocking out her shape and I knew I wanted her sitting on the mushroom looking at something but I wasn’t sure at what as I was making it up as I went along.
Early photos to the client came back with a request to make the hair shorter (more punk) which gave me a chance to work on the face more (I’m still not getting faces quite right but it’s all practice and this one brought hands and feet to the mix as well) and the suggestion of a her looking at a cupcake was floated and I went with that. My earlier thoughts had been around something like a flower, a dragonfly or a bird but the scale would have been interesting as they could have ended up being nearly as big as her.
Once baked, she was coated in filler primer (Halfords best), filled, some bits changed and filler primed again before being undercoated in black and painted.
The wings are made from silver coated wire, glued onto some fantasy film I got from ebay. It’s basically a kind of clear film which changes colour based on the angle you view if from. It’s quite cheap and I only used a small amount so I’ll have to find something to do with the rest at some point.
The grass on the base is made from a hanging basket liner I picked up from Wilkinsons for the princely sum of 10p. Chopped and glued down it looks pretty good.
More making of photos are in my Google photos album.
Overall I’m pleased with how she’s come out (and the mushroom) and it’s made a nice change from all the bronze statues I’m cluttering up the planet with at the moment.
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