With a couple of weeks to go until the deadline, it was time to paint the Jabberwock. I strongly doubted the sculpture was going to survive the show, so I wasn't going to too much effort into detail-painting it. I bought a big tub of wood stain from Wilkos, the sort usually used for fences. How well it was going to work on location I didn’t know, because there were several varieties of wood in this thing, but it seemed the most economical alternative.
Of course, the problem is also that a lot of the sculpture is a bit on the fiddly side, and tricky to paint, so for these bits (the majority of the caterpillar tracks, the neck etc) I cheated a bit and used spray paints. Which presented yet another problem as it meant that the parts of the model needing to be spray painted, also therefore needed to be dragged upstairs, through several doors, and a kitchen. Who needs a gym?
With problems multiplying like randy rabbits, the weather (with mere weeks until the deadline) suddenly turned from spring unseasonably-warm sunshine and no breeze, to wind, rain, sleet, thunderbolts and lightning, very very frightening.
For instance this was the morning of the day I'd planned to spray paint the caterpillar tracks... and a slightly unseasonable fall of snow. Which delayed things somewhat...
The overall colour scheme of the model is something that caused some questions during planning. This is meant to be a machine which has been taken over, and is generally a bit derelict and battered, then left out to the mercies of the weather. No shiny paint jobs here or polished brass here. In terms of visual inspiration I was thinking rust, rust, and more rust, taking particularly the vertical-boiler crane at Llanberis Slate Museum as an inspiration, and also a handy rusty brazier that was lying around the yard where I was painting.
Once the main bodywork and the more detailed bits were painted in rough colours, the plan was to re-assemble all the parts and then after the final detailing pass, to basically do an up-scaled version of how I painted the concept models, and dust it all with a variety of rattle-cans to achieve a bit of consistency (which should go some way towards hiding the slight variety of materials used throughout).
Some of the many tins of spray paint needed when covering the more fiddly bits of the sculpture, like the caterpillar tracks...
And then with time running out, it bloody snowed. And hailed, and rained, and bloody well snowed some more...
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