Brief: Butterfly for Hanna

Beautiful project  call with sad background

Well that one  has a sad motivation. Wittnesmyminis started a call via social media.

"I recently lost my little sister to mental health issues; she had been struggling for a long time with her demons and she was too tired to keep fighting."

In short - she loved butterflies, that’s why it was the theme for the call. Do something that incorporates a butterfly. The aim was to spread the word and collect money to donate for mental health issues.

That was an impressive bravery and initiative - and that was the drive for a donation and a mini project.

So I took my boxes of future projects and found a beautiful surprised looking monkey from big child creatives.

A pirate monkey with butterflies 

Why not. Maybe a scene on a ship? Let’s go.

The monkey perfectly fitted on a 3x3 plinth but that didn’t leave much space for adding hints to the viewer, that the monkey is really on a ship.

Sure, you can always go for a bigger plinth, add a mast, sails or steering wheel. But the relatively small monkey and butterfly would get lost. The bigger the scene gets, the less focus will be on the major topic.

Luckily there were some other matching items in my boxes. A printed barrel, the required butterflies, some spears from old GW skeletons and that’s it.

First off the hard work: "Planks" - Not as tough as a fitness training but cuting the little planks out of wooden stick make at least the fingrs hurt.

Some further brainstorming and I got some ideas to build. A grappling hook, an anchor or a cannon. The grappling hook was the choice. Reasonably small and placed on the railing would make a clear ship indication.

A few coursing minutes while glueing my fingers together with yarn and paper clips - et voila:

Put that on the scene with a rope ( yarn hardened by wood glue ) could make the impression of a ship.

One question puzzled me all the time - why should there be butterflies on a ship. Those are usually on a field or meadow? And that’s where the bottles came in. Maybe they contained some Butterfly - ambrosia. Some liquid they can’t resist? That way the insects could nicely be grouped around that.

Monkey conversion

Now to put that in a theme, the monkey needed to connect to the liquid idea. Pirates and rum is a perfect match, but he just wielded 2 pistols. So I crossed fingers, snapped one of and drilled a whole in the hand. The bottle was glued into that.

Finnally a butterfly on the remaining pistol connected him nicely to the theme of the base. Initially I planned a butterfly on his lips - that was a driving idea for the project as shown in the sketch. After the sketch it was just too big and seemed a weird focus blocker. 

Paint

The base was done in one or two evenings and there are no real WIP pics. Mostly saturated reddish browns, and the bottles in green as a complementary. The Butterflies were done in a bright yellow to peak out immediately.

The monkey received a purple/violet color - complementary to the butterflies.

If you take a close look to his arms - especially on the final pics - you'll also see a glimpse of furr texture. Nice try but a but way to shy (-;

A thing that I still like a lot is the bottle. For the effect it is important to have clear dark and light contrast. The lower part of the red liquid is dark and transitions to a midtone. 

Then it is quite important that there is another dark/bright contrast on the surface of the liquid - in that case a bright line.

Finally the pirate hat should receive a nice skull. Well, after two failed trials I was left with the insight that I'm not a skull painter and my skills are barely sufficient for simple sabres.

I was close to call it a day, but somehow the ape needed some more punch as direct visual focus - although I was generally happy with the monkey. That’s how the feather came to that fancy color - A nice little item that has a big impact on general appearance.

A fun little project that reminds me how important a big box of collected minis is. Every model in the collection has to chaince to raise a spark of inspiration, in the right moment.