Hot on the tail of yesterday's Catwoman review comes this Batman: The Animated Series Poison Ivy bust from DST. This mini-bust has a gorgeous sculpt by Steve Varner Studios, but like many pieces in this line, she suffered from some unfortunate paint apps. I say that in the past tense because it was really easy to remedy, despite my initial hesitations. I would normally buy these busts in person and select the best paint jobs, but I have so many high-end items in my budget this year that I have to order them from the cheapest place I can. So no cherry-picking the perfect specimens this time around. Poison Ivy has been around since the late sixties, but I honestly don't think she became a fully-dimensional character until BTAS. Her relationship with Harley Quinn was the missing facet to develop her into the elemental vixen we know and love today. For decades she wasn't much more that a deranged eco-terrorist with Bettie Page motif. So to me this bust signifies a significant evolution of an iconic character.
The immediate problem with Ivy is that she is cross-eyed. It's not super obvious in photos, but in person it's very awkward. Her right eye is not centered on the underlying sculpt. Yes, the eyelids and irises are part of the sculpt. So fixing her eyes amounts to just coloring in the lines. Plus the graphics on the box serves as an excellent guide to the intended design.
A couple more attention spots: Her hair is often not painted all the way to border with her skin. This is only noticeable from certain angles (like in the pic above). Also, having the eyeliner curl in by the ridge of her nose is a detail that distracts from the overall look.
So all the pics past this point are after a quick 10-minute touch up. I used a little bit of fleshtone color to remove the eyeliner by the bridge of her nose. I painted white over her irises and repainted them following the sculpted borders. I added a thick upper eyeliner like shown on the box. Then I mixed an orange color to touch up her hair borders. Sounds complicated, but it was really easy. I use crappy Apple Barrel paint and a tiny little brush.
Time for a Group Pic!
Here she is with Harley Quinn and Catwoman.
(One thing I really wish I could change about these figures is their bases. I get the art deco skyscraper motif, but I think they are too large and boxy. Plus if they were cylindrical, you could rotate the busts slightly to display the best subtle angle. I think the setup I am displaying below looks sloppy with the bases not lining up properly, but that's the ways I want their torsos lined up. Oh well.)
Cheers!
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