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I know what you mean! My Ruby Lap was an eBay find, and unfortunately her original box and inserts were long gone. The seller really tried to pack her well, but he was used to packing glass vases and didn’t realize that packing a heavy Windstone requires a different approach. The poor Lap bounced on her horns en route and arrived with the top of her head sheared off! I glued her back together and she looks quite decent, but I have yet to finish patching the tiny remaining gap and fixing her paint.
These Laps, always trying to do gymnastics . . . . :~
I’ve run into this too. I usually make sure I have the dragon in its bag (the bag makes it easier for the dragon to “settle” in the box). I set it in the box, try the top insert, and if it doesn’t fit, then I adjust the dragon slightly and try again. It can take some fiddling around to get it to finally fit. The Lap always wants to lie more on its back than any of the other sculpts, and that often fools me too. One of these years I’ll remember to take a photo of a Lap in its box, to remind me of how keeled-over they are when positioned properly. :p
I really like the coloration of the China Mama Foo, and OH MY those are a wonderful pair of bookends! The way you applied the colors reminds me of the “powdery” finish to a parrot’s wings. Very realistic effect, very attractive shading, and I think the way you finished the base and ends is just delightful. Well done! :bigsmile:
Congrats on your new PYOs! 🙂 I hope that you have a lot of fun painting them.
There are several tutorials on painting PYOs; if you go to Advanced Search you can search key word “tutorial” in the Paint-Your-Own grouping and find them. Some of them are older and may not have their photos. However, the text is still there. You can also go to the PYO Gallery and look at the pieces created by the authors of each tutorial, and decide if that is a painting style that appeals to you.
I learned a huge amount from KoishiiKitty’s PYO tutorial. which focuses on acrylics. The link is below:
http://windstoneeditions.com/forum/koishii-pyo-painting-tutorial-v1
I use this basic technique on every PYO, and when I make mistakes, it helps me fix them. By layering on the colors in washes, I get a chance to discover how different colors behave when combined on the PYO (which can be different from how they combine on paper!). Gypsum’s tendency to slurp up paint unevenly can lead to blotching, but Koishii’s technique means that the blotches don’t really matter in the end. I find that they actually enhance the look of the piece by giving it depth. But you can also continue to layer until the blotching disappears. One of the most important benefits of her technique is that by developing your colors gradually using washes of different types, you get a wonderfully rich, dense final coloration.
The best advice I can give regarding PYOs is give yourself time. It won’t look the way you want it to at first. Keep at it and hang in there. If it’s driving you nuts, set it aside for a while. Eventually a solution will come to you, and the more you experiment with paints the faster you’ll learn. Above all, have fun! These are wonderful pieces to paint. 🙂
Thanks for the heads-up! I’ve sent in what I saw today while gardening. I just wish that flock of dingdong sparrows that keep stealing the chicken feed would hold still long enough for me to properly identify them! But they shoot out of the barn the minute I get within twenty feet. Their guilty consciences must plague them!
It’s a shame I’m not out and about as much on weekends as I am during the week. This neighborhood is crawling with birds. There’s a pair of ferruginous hawks, a half-dozen kestrels, and three or four redtails that I see every morning on the way to work. A few evenings ago I spotted two great horned owls just down the road at dusk. There’s an egret at the corner of our street most mornings, and a quartet of turkey vultures near work. And there’s that Cooper’s hawk that keeps eyeballing the chicken yard, and the small clan of ringneck doves that shows up to help clean up the grain. But I didn’t see any of them today, so I don’t think I should count them. Maybe I’ll spot some of these guys tomorrow. 🙂
I like the “texturing” of the colors that you gave him over the shoulder, body, and much of the wing. Keeper PYOs are large enough that there’s room to create some variance of color on each scale, and I think that doing so adds to the realism of the piece. The fact that the colors darkened a bit is actually OK: they show bright here and there, enough to speak of vivid fall colors, but without being overwhelming. The antiquing also works very well, adding enough shadowing to make the scales stand out. For a first dragon, this is really very nice and it’s clear that you put a lot of time and care into him. I hope you continue to paint more! 🙂
I do like the baby Poads. 🙂 Their perky expressions, big feet and little beaks just make them adorable, and it would be fun to see some in production colors. However, I can also sympathize with the urge to make them all Grab Bags, because after all what a perfect opportunity to create! I think that the Grab Bags are a wonderful idea, because not only do we get to see dozens of wonderful new patterns and color combinations, but Melody gets a chance to try out various ideas that have been percolating, and see which ones could pan out into new ideas for production or LP. And there’s always the chance that a Grab Bag might bear enough resemblance to a production color scheme that the baby goes well with the adult: after all, many juvenile coats look like a different take on the coat of the adult. So really, it’s a win-win.
Pssh. This just disgusts me. That a greedy bunch of sods in a gaming company would have the unmitigated gall to try to trademark something so generic and non-specific as the term ‘space marine’ is a pretty darn sorry state of affairs. Who the billy blue blazes let them smack a trademark on that term in the first place? Trademarks are not for general terms, they are for specific ideas, images, and concepts.
And for them to then turn their big scary legal goons on some poor regular jane who just writes e-books to help pay for her kids’ school fees: ohh, isn’t GW brave! So courageous and daring, to target such a dangerous target! I am trembling in my space boots. Oh, wait, I can’t; they’ve probably trademarked ‘space boots,’ since it’s obviously what space marines would wear.
It at least somewhat restores my faith in humanity that Amazon has retracted their hold on the e-book, and I can only hope that word of GW’s little clever-pants maneuver gets around and ticks off enough people that they’re too embarrassed to try to enforce any more of their nonspecific trademarks. They may trademark their characters and universe all they like, but they can just keep their grimy hands off of general terms of reference.
For me, I don’t care how fabulous their games may be; I’ll have nothing to do with a company that behaves so badly.
I like the bright colors, the two-tone eyes are wonderful, and the way you did the antennae is great. I laughed when I saw the tiger moth one. These are very cute! I can see why they are doing well for you. 🙂
Aw, man, what a disappointment! 🙁 It’s so frustrating when sellers do this. I once had a ruby Lap arrive with a broken head–and that was after the seller assured me he packed and shipped china and glass items all the time, and knew what he was doing. But he didn’t pack the dragon tightly enough to stop her from shifting in the box, and she bounced on her head somewhere along the route.
I hope your next old brown arrives in pristine condition!
Your new dragon is quite nice! I like the glass eyes and his expression of slightly chastised mischief: he may have gotten a scolding, but he’s hardly going to stop whatever it is he’s up to.
The dragon-foxes are so sweet and I’ve debated on them more than once, but that little dragon looks like he may overcome my resistance. :p Please do continue to develop that one! :bigsmile:
Welcome! 🙂 I think you’ll like it here–folks are friendly and we all love to swap info and thoughts regarding Windstones. There are a lot of extremely creative minds here as well, which makes it a great place to spark new ideas.
I can remember discovering the Old Green and Old Brown dragon families (then new) at a mall when I was a penniless high school freshman. I think I left a permanent nose print on the display window. A few years later I convinced my mom that all I wanted for Christmas was for her to go in halvsies with me so that I could afford the Old Green Mother. I still have that dragon, and the collection has grown a bit since then, as funds allowed.
Congrats on your collection, and I hope you have a great time here on the Forum!
