A Blue Façade

Hello again, folks.  Time to tune in once more and see what I've gotten done today - which really is not a whole lot.  But I have started on this months competition piece, and I'm ready to share!

I'll start off with a bit of a discussion on priming wood.  Unlike pewter or hard plastic, Wood (such as the balsa wood that I used on this figure) and other porous materials (like plaster and related products) tend to become rather...  Shall we say, malodorous when primed using a spray primer.  Because of this, you need to use something to create a non-porous barrier between the wood/plaster/what have you and the spray primer.  I, personally, like to use craft paint for this purpose - it coats well, it's thin, so it doesn't obscure details, and its biggest flaws - it's low color- and light-fastness - aren't a factor as you're not seeing it anyways.

So, that said, here's the pics of the piece primed up and ready to go:

Here's the front.  Nothing really special to see here, so moving along...

And here's the back.  With a layer of primer over everything, you really can't tell which parts are original plastic, and which are the balsa-wood add-ons that I put on.

And, finally, we have the first half of the base layer of stonework.  For a project like this, I take a variety of Artists Paints - expensive, but they have excellent color- and light-fastness levels, which makes them the next best thing to actual hobby paints - but they are thick!  So be ready to water them down quite a bit to be usable.  In this case, I took a mid gray with a dark blue-gray to get this color, which I will then go over with the gray, and finish off with a gray/white mix to give the final results.  It's going to take a while to get everything done, but it'll be well worth it in the end!

That's all I have for now, folks.  Tune in Tuesday to see the rest of this first level, and perhaps get started on the drybrushing.  Until then, folks - paint on!