Date: June 8, 2007
Total hours spent today: 2

Another good morning of painting, and paint prepping. I'm feeling very good about my progress, and I'm still pretty pumped about getting him finished. I'd love to say I'm officially "back in the swing of things", but that's all going to end tomorrow when I leave town to do some work. Oh well.

Yesterday, I think I mentioned that I mixed up another six cannisters of paint. Here they are in all of their glory. However, I did make a mistake, and I thought I would share it here on the off chance that someone else might be able to avoid it. So when I'm mixing out my paint, what I did yesterday was I poured the paint out of the can into a plastic cup, THEN poured from the plastic cup into the measuring cup. This allows me a degree of precision that I would not get if I was pouring directly from the can. You know, it tends to slop all over the place, as there is no spout. Hard to control the speed it dispenses. So I poured a plastic cup of the paint, then poured the paint into my measuring cup, carefully measuring out the amount I wanted. There was still paint left in the plastic pouring cup. I spent a few minutes mixing up the paint and the thinner, and finally dispensing it into the small containers. So far, so good. BUT, when I went to pour the rest of the paint from the plastic cup into my mixing cup, I noticed that the plastic cup was dissolving!!!! Looks like the paint was eating right through it. I poured it very quickly into my mixing cup, BUT I noticed that some of the outside layer of the cup had mixed in with the paint. How did I notice this?? Because the cup was red!!!! It was only a little tiny touch, and when I mixed it up, I couldn't tell the difference. It certainly didn't turn bright pink or anything. But who knew?? I had no idea the paint would dissolve those styrene cups... but now I do.

So on the off chance that the paint did turn a little pink, I've decided to use those three containers as undercoats. I marked them with a black slash on the bottle so I can tell them apart. So the 20 bucks worth of paint will not go to waste. Whew.

I took a closer look at the legs which have already recieved two coats of paint, and noticed that I missed a few nooks and crannies in the under shoulder recesses. So my task for this morning was to re-visit the legs, and get that fixed. While there, I also propped up the diet cylinders and gave them a first coat. The legs came out beautifully, and I consider them done as far as paint is concerned. Still need to zap them with a clear coat, but that is for another day.

Here's a better picture of the cylinders. They turned out really beautifully. This paint is really quite incredible. It just goes on so cleanly. I love it. I did a VERY quick once over with some 2000 grit sandpaper after the first coat of paint, just to get out any dust and whatnot that may have gotten in it. I find this to work really well when there's going to be another coat.

So with all that success behind me with the legs and diets, I thought I would grab a few more parts to paint. I took a closer look at the skirt and realized that it still had that "dry spray" texture on it from all the primer, so I knocked it down with some 400 grit sandpaper. It's now pretty smooth, and looking good. This is one of those peices that I feel kind of goofy investing lots of time in, as it will barely be seen. Still, I've managed to pull WAY back from my "abso-perfect" philosophy I apply to hand props, so in that regard, I'd say I'm still ahead of the game.

Though a poor picture, this is the center ankle, now ready for painting. I basically gave it the same treatment as the skirt. Just had to knock the texture of the primer down a bit so it's ready to paint.

Sadly, that's where I have to stop for the day. I was all pumped up to paint the skirt and center ankle with a first coat, but conditions prohibited it. Mainly, I have to head up to Torrance today for some rock and roll! Me and my friend Bill are rehearsing a few songs for our next album. Stay tuned!! Bill and I formed a splinter band from "My New Invention" years ago, and recorded a ton of songs. Now we're hoping to record a few more, and release an album. Should be totally cool.

As always, thanks for reading. See you next time.