As anyone who might visit my tumblr at any given time will probably notice, I have a decided weakness for gothy, emotive camp.
Even before I discovered the world of BJDs, a friend gave me a little Zemeno figurine for Christmas. Although I had seen such fairy figurines before, I thought that their appeal for me had died sometime around my eighth birthday. On the whole, this remains true. However, this Zemeno Dark Fairy Figurine came opportunistically packed with a black and purple flier advertising a number of other fairy figurines.
I had never heard of Zemeno. They had an underwhelming web presence at the time, so all I knew was that I had seen one of their dark fairies, and I knew where my friend had made the purchase. This last point acquired additional interest because, amongst the fairies advertised on the purple flier, there was one who, as a tiny printed facsimile, reminded me of an illustration by Edmund Dulac of Scheherazade.
I went to Millenium, gothic kitsch central, and inquired about the figurine shown in the flier. Lo and behold, the lantern fairy with the headscarf was available (her company name is 'Eclipse' and you can see her at La Table Ronde's appropriately camp website). I recall feeling utterly scandalous as I left the store with my lantern fairy; no decent young adult in Art School ever purchases such tacky things, I thought. Then there was the price. These were the days before BJDs, and I performed all manner of mental acrobatics to impress upon myself that spending $30-ish on the lantern fairy would not entirely condemn me to the ranks of the hopelessly dissipated and debauched.
When I returned home and inspected my dissipated indulgence, I discovered that the mass-manufacturing process had not been very kind to my fairy. Part of her face was globbed onto her headscarf in the manner of a pancake. The paint around her eyes was not very precise either. Not having any other suitable tools, since Art School was determined to make me a large-scale painter of Edifying Post Modern Art, I used a sakura fine-liner to fix the pancake face and badly painted eyes. At least, from a distance, she looked respectable. However, I was never completely happy with her face.
So, a number years later, I find myself in the heat of procrastination and academic despair. I take the lantern fairy down from her post, am appalled by the company face-up, and feel a sort of pity for my inexperienced, fine-lining self. It then occurs to me that I have since painted on somewhat similar objects that cost a great deal more. I can hardly imagine making my poor fairy look any worse. So I decided to try giving her a sweeter, more gothic pin-up inspired look.
What I discovered in the process is that her forehead is strangely bumpy. I also found an inverted bubble in her nose, which I was only partly successful at filling with acrylic paint. She's about 10 inches tall, so this makes her my smallest face-up to date. I used only arcylics, which is another reason why she is not quite as subtle as my BJD face-ups. Maybe in several more years, I'll have improved sufficiently to do attempt another repaint. For the time being, I think she looks tolerably better.
She has azo red on her lips, raw umber and mars black on her eyes and eyebrows, titan buff on her nose, and ultramarine blue in her irises.
As always, thank-you very much for reading!
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