Weekend update: August Model Build Gathering & Velvet Progress

This weekend was the August Model Build Gathering. We had a fairly small July gathering, so I wasn’t sure what to expect for this months. Folks trickled in, some of the new folks from last time came back, and one of the builders that came to the one of the earliest build gatherings made his triumphant return. I got a good amount of masking work for Velvet done, got utterly trashed, and played rock band. Damn good weekend.

Standard fare for the build gathering, everyone working on stuff. Terry working on his whorehammer stuff; Dave got some painting in; Gtetra continued to mask and paint his Gaplant; and I just worked on masking off Velvet. It was a pretty good turn out. Helen had her friends come over and they were playing rockband while we built. And at pure randomness, the group started playing Under the Bridge while it was playing for us on the radio we had streaming through the computer.

We built until about 7:45 when folks started to get hungy and want food. Gtetra went off to check on the contractors working on his house; so we needed to his something sorta close and fast as there was alcohol and drunken rockband to be had later that night. The local In & Out was shot down, Mexican food in little TJ was shot down, however, my enthusiastic suggestion of Chik-Fil-A got positive responses, so we piled into three cars and headed out.

As usual, I take off like a bat out of hell just to f with whom ever was trying to follow me. Terry’s gotten pretty good at following me, as I thought I lost him but he was right behind me the whole way. Damn impressive. But then again, according to my passengers, I was driving fairly tame. We all waked in and ordered, as as we were waiting for our food to arrive, Gtetra arrives. This is odd as I’d forgotten that he went home to check on his contractors; and the Chik-Fil-A thing was spur of the moment, so it was pure coincidence that he showed up. Apparently, he was in the drive through, pulling out and on his way back to my house when he saw Funaka walking into the restaurant; so he parked and walked in and joined us. Good call on the Chik-Fil-A I guess.

Finishing up, we headed home for some good old fashioned drunken rock band. The group gathered around and we dropped shots of Tequila, Jaeger (well, three of us anyhow), and the night started rolling. Strike up rockband drinking game. Drink for failing, drink for lowest score, drink for highest score, community drink for 5 star… Oddly enough, some of us do better when drunk; others, not so much.

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In the middle of all this, Duke and Hugo continue to play. I looked over at them as I heard some low growling, and it was the two tris playing tug of war with Hugo’s rope toy. So damn cute. Unfortunately, the camera was too far away, and they both gave up on the game by the time I grabbed the camera. Art was able to “catch” a little Duke as he tends to have a death grip on the rope when someone is pulling on the other end.

Playing tug of war with Duke is fun, because he refuses to let go; ever.

So before getting utterly smashed, I got the shading done for Velvet’s skin Friday night. Last we left, she was looking a little sun burnt. I have that picture here for a comparison. After the base skin tone. I go in with a very light version of the skin tone and highlight specific areas using highly thin paint and spraying very close at very low pressure. For shading, one of the things that I find helpful is to set the kit up in a particular lighting setup and snap a picture, then use the picture for reference as to where to apply highlights. Once the highlighting is done, I use a medium color skin tone and blend everything together by spraying normal thinned tone at high pressure for a distance.

Here is the masking progression for the upper arm details. The skin areas are masked off with tamiya tape and the larger areas are masked off with parafilm. The ring is also masked off. The base wine red is sprayed on, and once cured, the inner areas for the upper arm detail are masked with blue sticky tac which served as a temporary adhesive for detail pieces. I do this so that when painting, I don’t have mis-matched tones for the red when shading. I used finisher’s bright red for the highlighting. Once done, the masks are removed and the detail pieces are glued into place.

Bubba did an amazing job detailing Velvet’s panties; and while when the kit is completed, the panties are completely covered, I felt that it would be an injustice to the kit if such details were ignored, so a masking we will go. The edges around the panties are too sharp and curved, so I found the use of blue sticky tac very useful. First I lay down tamiya tape as close to the details as possible. Next up, the bigger areas are wrapped up in parafilm. Last step is the detail masking for with the sticky tac. A toothpick is all that I use to apply the sticky tac; and it is an exercise in patience, but the results are completely worth it. It is also much quicker than laying down tape and cutting it to match the details. The panties are masked off first against the body, then a separate masking for the inner details is done. Granted it kinda looks like a mess after masking, but the results will be worthwhile.

The panties are painted black, and after about 15 minutes, the inner masking for the panties is removed to expose the skin tone. To create a sheer clothing effect, I used mr color smoke gray which is a clear gray, and perfect for this application. The side detail areas are also unmasked and the clear gray is sprayed. After about an hour of cure time, all the masking is removed to check for mistakes as perfection in masking and painting is a VERY rare thing. Pulling the masking off, there are some areas missed areas that were easily fixed with some very high grit sanding mesh, spot blending and touch up airbrushing, hand painting some missed details; and after all that, the main body piece is done.