Buffalo Gal

 I figured it was time to get started on my "pledge model" for my local modeling club. Earlier in the year, I had chosen Buffalo Gal. This is a scene from It's a Wonderful Life, starring Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart. I enjoy it, and watch it a few times each Christmas season.  Since it's been around since 1946, I'm sure everyone has seen it at some time.

The model is a well made 3D printed kit by Nostalgic Resin, and depicts the walk home after George and Mary fell into the school's swimming pool (BTW the pool's real and still exists at Beverly Hills High School). This is the first real scene where they start their romance.  

 

 The first problem I had was whether to do it in color or B&W. Due to the size I thought it was too large for it to be all in B&W, and soon after found a nice colorized image of what I needed - the clothes. 

 

The only problem I had with it was the sidewalk was warped, and no amount of heating kept it flat. So I quickly tossed it aside and got out a piece of sheet styrene. I also had a decent sized wooden base and tested fitted all the basing materials. Besides the sidewalk, it come with a section of hedge, a picket fence, and a pillar.

Getting started, the pillar was painted gray, the fence white, and the hedge a green. It looked a little too plain so the hedge got flocked, I painted the picket fence and added some miniature rose bushes to fill the void, and the  pillar was fine so it just got a coat of paint with a little dark wash. seems I never took a WIP of the base so we'll see it at the end. 

Now I know what's to be done with the figures it was just a matter of filling in the colors. 

 

Getting to the faces, Stewart's likeness was good, Donna's barely came close, but not being able to sculpt a likeness, I'll just add paint to this as well.

 My next decision was Mary's robe. I know it's white, but that's an awful lot of white and I didn't want to make her look like a ghost with a sheet. So being George's clothes were warm earthy colors, I tried making the shadows in the robe a similar earthy colors. No good... That just made her look like she rolled around in some dirt. So the robe was repainted and this time I took the palest blue to fill in the shadows. This looked better. and I was done. Thanks for looking. 

Sadly my roses were mostly hidden

 

Marilyn Finale

 Continuing on with Marilyn, the example shows here wearing a black dress. There's a lot of black with no real breakups in color. What I chose to do was take some Blue Gunmetal, which is a dark blue color with metal flakes in it. To make it a little bit darker I did add a little black.

Then For the hair originally I chose V's Wood, but that looked too yellow. Marilyn's hair changed - A LOT - over time and I guess depending on what movie she was acting in. So I over-painted it with Cork, and then two highlights ending with Ivory. 

For the stole I just used a light gray, and under some of the larger tufts a darker gray. The dry brushed with an Off White, finally ending with  a light coat of Pearlizing Medium.

 

Marilyn

 Catching up with my posts we have Marilyn Monroe from the Suite Life Productions. The card that came with the kit indicates she's part of a potential series Girls on Film Part 1. 

She looks like she's about 1/5 scale and was a very nice 2 part casting with only minor cleanup of the seam-line that runs around the kit. 

If you read my entry on the Pebbles bust, you already know about whats happening here. If not, very briefly I saw the You Tube channel creator that has been looking for an effective yet simple was to create a realistic look for skin tone coat in a purple pink color on top and then from the bottom add a red.
    

Then when you add the skin color in light passes while leaving some of the red and purple you end up with a lifelike skin IMHO.

Check back for more. Thanks for looking.