MJI's Art

[MJI]

I like painting and sculpting. I cast leaves with silicone then press polymer clay into the silicone molds to make leaf replicas.
I mostly make them into magnets using Lumina clay (dries flexible and break resistant) but I am also experimenting with making them into beads to use in jewelry.
Magnets:

This one of my necklace pendants.

I also like to custom paint figurines on occasion. I view it kind of like the adult coloring book concept, only instead it is a 3-D object to color. This is custom Safari Ltd “Twilight Dragon” that uses the same mold as their forest dragon. I picked it because the solid unpainted black body made a good base.

I might touch it up a bit more or I might just leave it. The claws right now are what bug me most, but the paint job they did is permanent (doesn’t dissolve with oil or acetone), very slick, and I am not sure if much can be done. I still like it much more than what I started with.

[etruscan]

Dark or black nail polish over the red?

[MJI]

I can try that. I particularly like the Sinful colors line of colors. Oddly I don’t use them for my nails (my job doesn’t allow painted fingernails), but instead I use them as paints for various things.

Choices would be “Rich in heart” a really dark iridescent red or “diamond in the raw” a sparkly silver. I just have to give some time for the paint to cure on the body and figure out what protective spray coat to use.

What kind of spray finishes work for PVC type plastic without causing it to go tacky?

[Prezaurian]

If you wanted to start over from scratch, I would suggest priming the whole figure with krylon (or rustoleum) matte primer. But for touch ups you could try a brush on primer. Brush it over the claws and then paint over the primer. Unfortunately I can’t offer any suggestions on what kind of spray finishes to use over PVC type plastic. I use brush on finishes.

You can check out my work on dA & Redbubble!
https://prezaurian.deviantart.com/
https://www.redbubble.com/people/prezaurian?ref=artist_title_name

[MJI]

I’ve done the Krylon matte finish with some PVC/ vinyl figurines before – Bad idea. It flaked right off. It was fine as long as you never bumped or bent any of the flexible areas. If you did, there was trouble overhead. There was also issues with it reacting to the PVC and making it tacky. Dollar store figures were the worst. (I tried customizing their horses as well as various insects.)

So far I’ve found fabric paints and oils to be better choices. Oil paint doesn’t appear to chip off if applied in thin layers. It might still rub off some if handled roughly. But even then so far seems to be minimal.

Fabric paint: I had a set of it but they all eventually ran dry from lack of use (I went on art hiatus for a number of years.) I’m not ready yet to build up a whole new palette of paint at the moment unless it is for a commission or something important. Plus the kind I was looking for Tulip soft or stretch isn’t commonly sold locally for quite a while. But that was an acrylic that adhered to such material and could flex along with it. I used it on a praying mantis on a PYO insect set. But limited color range and loss of interest at the time prevented me from finishing it beyond the base coat.

Golden High flow is another I’m testing. I painted a dollar store honeybee figurine. The paint has survived gentle handling with some slight bending so far.

I’m going to try out PYM II on a vinyl figurine. That stuff is designed for sealing painted polymer clay without making it go sticky. Hopefully it will work.

Anyways, the coloring job on the body so far? Is it good, bad or needs some improvement?
I painted the claws, but will need to do work on where the quick meets the claw. The makers just dabbed the whole area with the red paint.

[Author]

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