Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Bram Stoker's Lucy

 This bust is from Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula film from 1992. The likeness is that of Sadie Frost who played Lucy Westerna, Dracula's victim in London. The pose shows Lucy has already been killed by Dracula and Van Helsing and the others confront her as she returns to her crypt. In the film she was just about to be married, so when she died she was buried in her wedding dress - hence all the frills...


 The model comes in 9 parts - 4 headdress frills, her head, arm, collar, body and base. It was a white resin casting and only 1 or 2 seam lines remained. 

As usual I started with paint the portrait. Since she's dead, she's very pale, but high rez images show blush was applied to her cheeks. So I had to remember that but not make it too obvious. she also looked to have gray eyes, but this round I picked paint that was too light.


Putting that aside to dry I tackled the next most obvious part, the frilly collar. Naturally the part is one solid piece of resin, but again looking at detailed pics, the real thing was mostly open lace where you could see thru it. How to do that?


What I did was give the whole part a wash of gray, and then came back with a makeup brush doubling as a dry brush and carefully brought back the highlights. Then I added some pearlizing paint to give it a shine. The pearls around her neck were also pearlized to give them a similar shine. The ornament was painted a chrome.


Since everything was overwhelmingly white, I decided to add some purple to the shadows of the ruffled headdress and her gown. The actual cap she wore showed up as a different white color, so that was painted Ivory. Similar was done for her arm.

I painted the base a simple black and then drybrushed some white to brig out the texture in the stone. At the end I added some "blood" drips and I was done. 





 

 

Medusa

Always looking to add to my Medusa collection. This time we have one that was sitting in the stash for so long that I no longer remember the producer or any other info. I tried doing a search but - no joy. If anyone recognizes it, please let me know...

 It came in 3 parts - the bust the snakes and the base. It was a nearly flawless casting - a few faint seam lines but nothing really worth noting. 


 

Started off with adding some flesh tones, and decided her outfit would be red. While that was drying a drybrushed the base and then added some green tint. 



Finally I addressed the elephant in the room and tackled the snakes. I didn't want them all to be the same color. There are so many sculpted in there, that I was afraid it would look like one big blob.  After getting them all colored in, they seemed too bright. So out came the Citadel Agrax Earthshade wash (brown) and dulled them down a bit. I added the black wash to the deepest recesses for that effect. 


Finally, I tidied up a few areas, and added a little more color to the base, and I was done. Thanks for looking.





My obligatory size comparison with soda...;)