Proper Preparation - Painting Prospers

It was a gorgeous day here in Saitama on Saturday, but I couldn't take advantage of it to do any painting because I had to be at the dojo in the morning, the dentist in the afternoon and at the barber's in the early evening. I decided that if the weather was just as good the next day that I would paint the armour.

I wanted to paint all the armour piece on the same day so that they were all painted in the same weather conditions and would all have the same look and finish. With the humidity in Japan changing so frequently I have found that different parts of a model can be slightly different colours if you spray on different days even if you sprayed from the same can!

If I was going to paint everything at the same time that meant I needed to have everything prepared. I went through all the armour pieces making sure they were all primed and then attached each piece to a bamboo skewer or chopstick with a clamp or blu-tack (thanks, Tonzo!).

With all of them attached to something I realized that my spray box was not big enough to hold every piece that I planned to paint. So I grabbed two empty cardboard boxes and proceeded to make two more spray boxes. When I had everything ready it was after midnight. I took this picture.

I then went to bed and ended up sleeping maybe 4 hours as my daughter is sick right now and I can never sleep if she isn't sleeping. I think we both finally fell into a good sleep around 3 am.

The bright morning light coming through the curtains awakened me. My first inclination was to reach for my cellphone to check the time, but I knew that if I looked at the clock and it was early that I wouldn't make an attempt to get out of bed and I would miss a good opportunity to get everything done.

I dragged my sleepy self out of bed and looked outside.







The view from my 'Gunpla Room' window.
Sunny!





Perfect weather! I grabbed my spray boxes and supplies and headed downstairs and out the side door. It took me two trips to get everything outside and ready to go. I started with the bigger pieces and gave them the first coat. I tend to spray really lightly on the first coat to see which spots may cause problems and to try to prevent buildup.

Some of the pieces didn't have a proper coating of primer and that was noticeable but something that I could fix later. It took me about an hour to spray every piece of armour and I used about one and half cans of paint. Then I went inside as the house was starting to wake up.

After some breakfast and a shower I went outside to check on the pieces. There were a couple of problem pieces that I took sandpaper too right there but for the most part everything looked good. I then proceeded with the second coat. For the second coat I usually push down harder on the 'button' to get a more powerful stream and then run it across the piece quickly. I used about two cans of paint on this part. Then it was back inside to look after daughter.

A few hours later I popped out again to check everything. Everything looked good! Rather than do a third coat on each piece individually I swept the can back and forth blanketing the pieces in a mist. I would do this several more time throughout the day. Just before dinner I brought all the pieces back inside.

I kept one can for touch-up but that was minimal and has been completed. I will be picking up some more gloss topcoat tomorrow and then start coating them in preparation for decals.

Would you like to see how it turned out?


Of course you would. However, the colour is still classified until the project is complete.