Here’s my take on Mama Buho from Spira Mirabilis

This one nearly defeated me haha. It’s a really wonderful sculpt and the experience of painting it was very different to any other model I’ve painted so far - definitely showed me the limitations of some of the ways I usually paint or get myself out of a jam if I find myself stuck during painting.

I found myself having to look at a lot at other painters work trying to get some inspiration or ideas for particular elements, in particular the two beautiful versions of this model from Marc Masclans and John chan - as well as some other spiras out there like Dave Colwells Wise Woman and Hugo Gomez Briones Arthur and Merlin which were also both big inspirations. This one really pushed me, and taking some time to look at pieces from some of the truly great painters around the community really helped me along the way.

This was a private commission for a collector and have to say a big thanks to him for trusting me to paint this model up. It’s a really wonderful sculpt, one of my favourite Spira models and I never really expected I’d get a chance to paint it - so I hope I was able to do justice to the sculpt.

Thanks as always to everyone who gave me any advice along the way painting this! Quite a few of my friends were bothered with an unnecessary amount of messages when I needed reassurance whether or not the painting was coming together haha.

Thanks for reading and would love to hear your thoughts on the piece!