Continuing the saga of the red plastic horse, the first item on the agenda was to figure out which method (of several) for getting a tad more realism out of the critter would be most appropriate. Since the display would be where people could get up close and personal, airbrushing wouldn't give the effect of a real, live, thousand pound mammal supporting a real, live, dressmaker's dummy clad in John's castoffs.
'Nother words, it needed hair -- or the illusion of it, anyway. Besides, Big Red hadn't travelled well in the pickup truck...
Airbrushing wouldn't do a thing until the gouges got filled. And the amount of modelling putty (aka, "green goop") required to fill the cracks, holes, scrapes and scratches would run the repair budget (aka, "maybe five dollars") deeply into the red.
Ever hear of acrylic gesso?
Work the brush properly when it's still wet and you get a reasonable facsimile of hair.
Slather two coats over the dings and the dings disappear. It dries to a nice matte finish and adheres to pretty much anything, even waxed plastic.
Somebody call the E-Wing! Is this transformational, or what?
And, it helps to remember that horses don't have a whole bunch of hair surrounding their eyes and they *definitely* don't have hairy lips. So no undercoat in those areas.
That's definitely a horse of a different color. But not the *final* color. Not even close...
To be continued...
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