Birds of Spring by Whoopiepie [GK]

Hi everyone!

Today I’m sharing another not-so-recent (but at least it’s from this year!) project: the little birds Su-chan and Melo-chan by Whoopiepie_h. Incidentally, she recently announced some new birds, and I’ll probably pick up a couple of them, because they’re just too cute :3 And my Japanese teacher told me that the birds they’re based on are the Japanese counterparts of our sparrow and nightingale :3

I love garage kits as a whole, but originals are a special kind of pleasure and aesthetic experience, from hunting them down and buying them to seeing the final result. The casting quality can suffer sometimes, of course, but some originals are cast so beautifully that they’re an absolute joy to work with. These birds are one such example. Since they’re original characters, it wasn’t hard to buy them on booth.pm, and the site even had a proxy service built right in; for a small fee, they sent these lovely girls my way. That was last autumn.

This is how beautifully everything looked when it arrived:

Unboxing:

In the artist’s version, both birds are green, but I wanted to make them brighter and more springlike. I spent ages looking through collections of color schemes and even chose something, but when it came time to paint, I realized it was harder to put that idea onto the actual parts than it had been to dream it up, so I simply started reaching for colors I liked The main idea from the start was to paint them with clear colors, delicately and beautifully, using clear gloss varnish as the primer, since all the parts were pure white, made from a pleasant soft resin, and needed no significant cleanup.

You can feel the artist’s love in every detail!

Clear primer:

Almost all the parts are held on with magnets, so the little ones wouldn’t be overloaded with pins—not that they need them here anyway:

On to painting:

For the skin, Gaia Notes Flesh White + Surfaceless Clear Pink; Melo’s head was done in clear yellow and green.

Su’s head was trickier: at first it came out too dark and just plain wrong, but then I got a little peach! Clear yellow over clear pink.

Along the way I paid a visit to the lovely Dina, ponnie, and she suggested using nail-art stencils to put patterns on the kimonos

We painted them there too :3

She gave me a few of those little stencils to take home, and I carried on there:

Melo’s pattern had to come off, though, because it bled and ultimately turned out to be unnecessary—it made the whole thing look too busy.

The flowers also turned out too cool-toned, so I had to warm them up a little with clear yellow.

Almost everything is ready, so it’s time to paint the eyes; I’ve included a few mildly cringe photos too))

Next came my struggles with the base. The final idea came from Leonardo: while I was looking for mirror mosaic pieces for my Love Live ladies, my eye suddenly fell on some things meant for decorating who-knows-what. I tinted the flowers a little, scattered them around generously, and that was that. I confess, it wasn’t terribly inventive

And with that, the birds were finished—not in time for spring, but in time for the bright, sunny summer! Each little bird sits snugly on a pin but can still rotate freely around it, so you can turn them away or turn the two friends toward each other :3

The girls brighten up my shelf and warm my heart even when there’s almost no sunshine at all. I hope you like them too :3

Thank you for reading, and see you next time! Wishing warmth to everyone