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Art • Art Gates • Studio • Slag • Resources • Wetumpka • Home A Fish Story continued... | |
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• Back at the studio I soon discovered that there was far too little power sanding that could be done and far too much hand sanding required. I used up the fingernails on my right hand to the extent that there were no nails into the "quick" of my nail beds producing an effect I don't plan to duplicate in the future... if I can avoid it.
I sanded the raw fiberglass and then began to coat the surface with Z-Grip, an automotive body filler. Three days of this when at last I determined that I could sand an fill with body filler for the rest of my natural life and still find flaws that I would like to correct. Enough already! I sprayed the foam areas light primer and made one more pass at filler and sanding.
Using my newly acquired HVLP paint guns, I applied two coats of auto primer and hardener to each of the lures (more about Wilfred here). Until now I had it in my head that I needed to use automotive paints since I knew that the lures would all be clear coated and I thought that this process required a two step paint in order to work. Automotive paints can be very expensive. After I visited the body shop that provides the clear coat, I learned they would wait at least a week before applying the clear coat. The reason given was that may designs were being painted with acrylic artist's paints or even oils... After discussing this question with a fellow sculptor, I decided to simulate air brushing by using spray cans. Again this is the first time I've ever tried this technique.
First I painted Charlie white all over again.
Then, I began masking off areas and painting layers from the lightest color
(yellow) to the darkest. While I was doing this I was trying to figure out how I
was going to create the checkered pattern for the large area behind the
yellow/orange collar. I finally hit on using double strands of 2" paper tape
with increasing overlap to make a taper. I wound these on the body in a slow
spiral and then crossed them with a steeper than 90 o angle to create
a fast tapering perspective. This produced its own problems in one area of the
body but the deadline was drawing near and no other solution produced itself so I
pressed on. I cut out each alternating diamond of tape with a razorblade to
finish the effect. To finish Charlie, I used a series of small brushes to paint the black interior of his mouth and behind the teeth as well as his eyes and the dark circle around each eye. A key to his "look" is the painting of the eyes and it took a little trial and error to get it right. In the end, I'm pleased with the effect.
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