Well… That’s ONE Way To Do It…

So last night, after fiddling around with the new Ghostbusters game for a good long while, I put some work back in on whatever this is (he still needs a name). I decided to give him some white identification bands. Two on the torso, and one on each forearm. I also decided that I wanted to try my hand at using salt for masking. It probably would’ve helped if I had actually gone and looked up the technique rather than just assuming that I knew what I was doing. In retrospect, I don’t think I knew what I was doing. In the proper hands, using salt works great to simulate paint chipping–which is what I wanted to do: I was trying to give the appearance that the white had chipped off, revealing the orange underneath. Did I succeed?

 

First, I masked off the areas of interest with Tamiya masking tape. From there, I brushed on some plain old water and then just basically sprinkled kosher salt on it. Looking back on it, I can’t remember if I was supposed to use kosher salt or sea salt–I still haven’t double-checked the process this morning. Regardless, I obviously didn’t give it enough time for the water to dry before I started painting. And then, once I had it painted, I didn’t give the paint enough time to dry before scraping off the salt. It would’ve been a "comedy of errors" if I’d found any humor in it.

 

I’m still not sure what I think of the end results. Thankfully, my crappy cell phone snapshot hides most of the details. I suppose it could’ve turned out far worse than it did. It needs a little bit of touch-up (the result of masking + hand painting), but I think I may be somewhat satisfied with the results. I’ll have to sit and stare at it for awhile, I suppose. At any rate, he’s moving forward.

 

I’ve even got ideas–and reference photos–for the semi-simple base. I’ll be moving forward on that as soon as I can figure out how to fake a 1/20 scale slab of cement.