A miniature painting project for my mother-in-law

Surprised last week by a request from my mother-in-law to paint a figurine she had, I set about the task to - at the very least - do a half decent job that didn't elicit any major disappointment. With this not being a personal project that I could take my own sweet time on (read procrastinate), I imposed a time limit of one week to finish painting the figurine. Luckily for me, the previous week had two public holidays which equaled four full days (plus the weekend) of free time to paint. Working throughout the past week on the figurine, I must've put in about 35 hours or more on the paint job.  

A miniature painting project finished in record time for my mum-in-law

Main clothing comprised of a yellowish orange-blue green combo 

Base was in pastel-like hues of sky blue, light pink, yellowish green and neutral greys

A major difficulty I encountered in this sculpture was not truly being able to know where the outer robes began and the inner clothing ended. As such, I took creative license in order to have a fairly decent ratio of yellowish orange to bluish green on the main clothing. It was all tied up by a neutral ivory colour to counterbalance the darker hues on the said main clothing.  

Strap on the left shoulder was painted ivory to provide a subdued counterbalance to the main clothing's hues

Natural stone structure was the easiest to paint - just dry brushed layers of progressively lighter greys 

Under photographic lighting, the skin tone seems to become fairer than under normal daylight or fluorescent light

For the skin, I tried to simulate a fair East Asian look. It turned out a bit too fair especially under photographic lighting and more so when contrasted with much darker hues of the clothing. In future projects requiring such skin tones, I'll have to either reduce the saturation/intensity of the surrounding hues or experiment with Vallejo paints to come out with a new East Asian skin tone recipe.    

Curves on the waves and clothing neutralise the jagged stones thus providing an equilibrium of sorts

Waves on the base were the second easiest part to paint, followed by the lotus flower/seed pod

Figurine prior to it being primed or any paints layered on

One extremely positive thing I got from this project was the surprise at my ability to actually finish a miniature painting project within one week. Granted I didn't attempt any freehand design on the robes - which would have increased the time to completion - but hey, it's still a big deal for someone whose projects have been known to drag on to over a year or even mothballed. Now all that's left to be done is deliver the figurine to my mum-in-law. I can only hope that this eye opening experience of a quick paint-job-turnover will stand me in good stead as I resume my own drawing/painting projects.