WHAT I DID THIS WEEKEND - 22/23 MAY

Everything was going fantastic this weekend gone with everything i planned to do on schedual a truely rare thing for me. Then BAM!, i forgot once i had the final flesh tones on Sharky & the witch Troll Screamers especially the witch since she is to be dressed over 'semi-exposed' area's (under her dress) i would then have to varnish her BEFORE i could continue to dress her!.

So as i say everything went on schedual, but NOW i have to wait a couple of days before i can finish dressing her then take any pictures to post here. That means it is entirely MY fault this time that 'what did this weekend' is going to be late - again!. I CAN how ever show you how Sharky's boarding cutlass turned out since that was completed yesterday at least:. Click on any of the pictures below to get a better look:

 
 
 
 
 


If you remember how it looked the last time i showed it? The basic construction is 1mm cardstock (pizza box) to make the blade with cerial cardstock shaped to make the hand guard. The handle is simply the inner tube from some tin foil which i slightly squashed to form the handles final shape. A small piece of cardstock capped off the foil inner tubes end nicely.

 

I added a couple of layers of news paper strips to give the blade some strength & a little more thickness so i could sand down the edges to make a slight cutting edge. Once fully dried i then painted the entire 'metal' portions with some silver water based paint as a base coat.

 

Once the base coat was fully dried i then gave it a coat of Plasti-Kote brand 'metal hammer' metalic finish spray paint. Now this is not like standard high gloss silver spray paint which has a superb high gloss finish. No this paint has a wonderfull dull, oily, blistered aged finish to it. I know thats a hard description to understand here is a close up of the paints finish:

This shot is a little dark. In the real world those 'dark' regions are not quite that dark more about half as dark as is shown here. The blistering shown is more like burst bubbles, with actual slight depressions & smooth area's inbetween. The whole finish looks & feels metal smooth (apart from the really small mixed burst blisters/bubble effect). The look IS an amazing aged steel effect & can be achieved in a single medium thick coating too.

I  created a nice dark burnt umber colour for one of the wood colours for the handle, but it made a perfect aged/rusty surface for the metal area's of the sword too. So i lightly sponged on a thin layer here & there. Before it dried i then 'dabbed' the fresh paint  with a dry cloth to remove the excess paint. The result speaks for itself i think?

For the handle i painted on a good even layer of the dark burnt umber colour i made. I then lightened the burnt umber twice making two more shades of the same colour. Only using small amounts on a long bristled brush i then 'gently' brushed on some intermittent strokes of the two lighter shades allowing each to dry fully before brushing on the next.

Now the 'normal' thing to do here would be to let the paint fully dry before sealing, but!, i wanted to age the entire cutlass finish. To do this i simply brushed on some clear water based varnish at the stage where the fresh paint just began to feel dry if touched gently. I very carefully brushed on the varnish making sure the brush did not go dry or the varnish go on too thin. The result was the fresh paint mixed slightly with the layer of varnish which whilst it gives the entire cutlass a deep rich shine it also blended the three tones of paint into a nice aged look. Because the varnish dries really fast the water based paint was fixed in place before it could blend (smudge) too much.

The final finish may not be 100% perfect or accurate but i like it lol.