Jan 26 2009 - deer, fox

Monday

Aside from spilling a thing of toothpicks, having a leaking bottle of denatured alcohol, dropping stuff, hearing multiple instances of racist jokes aimed at our new (and wonderful) President ... today turned out to be alright.

We took every mount we had done so far and perfected it so that we can start painting tomorrow.


We made the eyes, nose, and lips of the deer ready to paint black.
We did the same for the life-sized mounts.
Can you spot the fake part? I had to fix a cut in the face my fox had before I got it. I fixed it by adding texture to white epoxy, and then I'll airbrush it to match the patterns around it.
We filled holes on our fish.

We fixed the eyes and legs of our ducks and pheasants.

The main tools of the day were toothpicks, Q-tips, a dental tool, denatured alcohol, and this stuff called "magic sculpt" which is really just a resin and a hardener that you mix and it becomes extremely hard in ten minutes. It's basically a two part epoxy that is clay-like.

The eyes had to be sealed off, and though it is pink around the edges now, we are going to airbrush it. It's really cool, actually. The pink around the deer's eye will be black, but the inner membrane will be wet-looking and the outer one will look dry. It gives the deer a real-ish look. The lips and nose will also look wet and black. We will even put spit on the whiskers if we want to.

Anything we didn't want to get paint on it (mostly the eyes) has to be painted with latex. It will dry clear and be peeled off later.
The eyes look like this because of the wet latex. It will dry, be painted all over, and peeled off to reveal the nice glass eye underneath.
The fox's nose is white now but when we paint it, it will be black and glossy. His pink lips (which I had to sculpt on) will be airbrushed with a bit of dark brown.
We have to build new noses because the old ones (the real ones) look like raisins. This photo was taken before I was finished sculpting, so don't worry , I know it's bad! It looks better now, and it's drying overnight.

Tomorrow we paint our fish! Ewwwwww.