Japanese Figurine Painting Book Review 01: Pygmalion - Obsessive Finish of Girl's Figure, The A to Z of Hiroshi Tagawa's Fascinating Female Images

Hiroshi Tagawa. That's the name of my absolute favorite miniature figurine painter. To me his body of work represents the epitome of realistic figurine painting. If you're an artist seeking to render ultra realistic skin tones and facial features on a three-dimensional miniature figurine, you would be remiss to ignore his painting techniques as well as general work practices. And for the longest time I only had Facebook's badly translated (Japanese to English) posts to rely on, to get even the slightest inkling of what Tagawa-san was doing hobby-wise. But it's finally here, a book by Tagawa-san himself that has English translations! Anyway enough with the fan boy talk. Here then is a quick review of Pygmalion - Obsessive Finish of Girl's Figure, The A to Z of Hiroshi Tagawa's Fascinating Female Images.

Pygmalion: Obsessive Finish of Girl's Figure, The A to Z of Hiroshi Tagawa's Fascinating Female Images (Front Cover)

Pygmalion: Obsessive Finish of Girl's Figure, The A to Z of Hiroshi Tagawa's Fascinating Female Images (Back Cover)

 

Before I begin this review, I would like to make it clear I have yet to try out the painting techniques on this book. But I'm an experienced enough miniature painter to be familiar with such techniques and also be aware of how they might potentially fit into my existing workflow processes. In short, I'm pretty sure these techniques work, and more importantly they are well suited to my own style of painting. As an added bonus, you'll be able to find a short video at the end of this post showing a quick overview of what's inside the book via its pages being flipped quickly. On the video and photos here, all text on the book is intentionally blurred out to protect the author's intellectual property.   

The 1/6 scale Female Android is one of my favorite pieces painted by Tagawa-san

 

About a third of the book is dedicated to a how-to-paint/prep tutorial of which the end result you can see in the photo immediately below this paragraph. From a cursory glance at the tutorials, I believe Tagawa-san uses a combination of lacquer, enamel and oil paints to achieve the paint effects you see in his work. In addition, he also shows how to place real-life fake eyelashes on the eyelids of the miniature figurines to exponentially increase the realism of the figurine's facial features. In the book, you can also learn how he paints veins and blemishes which makes skin tones look ultra realistic. 

Tutorials in the book are geared towards painting the ballerina girl above

Each painting tutorial step is written in both Japanese and English

In addition, to the how-to-paint guide, there are also descriptions on the resin figurine prep work

 

Ballerina girl is the only how-to-paint example given in this book and it takes up about one-third of this 96-page book. That leaves the bulk of the content comprising photos of Tagawa-san's completed works, articles about the artist himself and his work area, etc (see below). While this was a bone of contention among some online reviewers i.e. lack of tutorial examples, it wasn't the case for me. I was happy to take quality over quantity. Having a fairly detailed look at how he brings even just one resin figurine all the way from the prep-stage to the final fully painted stage was a real eye opener.    

A large proportion of the book comprises photos of various completed works by Tagawa-san

Tagawa-san's body of has also been on display in art exhibits

The master himself, Hiroshi Tagawa-san (in an article about him and sculptor Hiroki Hayashi)

 

In line with my wish to get my YouTube Channel up and running with more content, I decided to do a quick page flip viewing video for the book. Please do note that the somewhat blurry book text on the video was intentional in order to safeguard the author's intellectual property. Also blurred out were sections of the book which contained nudity. Personally I've no issue with nudity in miniature figurines as I consider it to be art. However, I'm aware some may be sensitive to it hence the censorship. 

 

If I had to score this book out of 10, I would give it an 9 out of 10. Being a huge fan of Tagawa-san, I'm frankly just relieved he decided to finally publish a book that highlights his painting techniques. Of course as consumers we'll always want more. More tutorials, more photos, more articles, more detail. But apart from video tutorials or face-to-face classes with the artist, this is about the best one can hope for. In short, I'm extremely happy with my copy of  Pygmalion - Obsessive Finish of Girl's Figure, The A to Z of Hiroshi Tagawa's Fascinating Female Images. I highly recommend it.