Monday, March 21, 2011

Armor Progress

Here are my armor pieces in different stages of completeness.  The loincloth and owl-head belt buckle have a flat coat of paint, but have not been antiqued yet.  The tassets and cuffs have been antiqued and sprayed with shiny lacquer to seal them.  A ruler that just happened to be there gives a size estimate:


I made the owl-head belt buckle out of an entire 8-oz. pack of Paper Clay.  It dried feeling extremely light.  It took a few days to dry completely.  I filled in some cracks on the back and the inside of the beak (from the bottom) with hot glue to improve its structural integrity.  I was regretful to have to antique the owl-head belt buckle because it was so beautiful when I painted it with flat metallic gold acrylic paint:


Unfortunately, you couldn't see what it was from the side:



This is how the owl-head belt buckle appeared after antiquing:



To create an "antique" effect on my armor, I mixed black and blue paint together to create a shadow color, rubbed it on my armor, and wiped it away, but left it in the crevasses.  (Sometimes I had to go back in with a paint brush to get the effect right, especially on the stripes on the owl-head belt buckle.)  I also painted on faux "shadows" because I knew you would not be able to see any real shadows in flash-photography.  You can especially see this on my loincloth, where the point in the middle "casts a shadow" on the swirly pieces under it.  On the owl-head belt buckle, the dark areas are also shadows and recesses, for instance the nostrils.  (My friend said that the beak looked all lumpy with thumb-prints all over it before I painted it, but I think it was because she didn't know it had nostrils until I finished the antiquing process, and maybe she thought the nostrils were weird dents.  I don't think the beak looks lumpy...)

Here you can see the antiqued owl-head belt buckle, barn owl-head knee armor, and loincloth.  They have all been sprayed with shiny lacquer to seal them.  The barn owl-head knee armor was made from another 8-oz. pack of Paper Clay with some to spare.  They took a few days to dry, and I painted them with silver and copper metallic acrylic paint, and antiqued them with the same black and blue mixture of acrylic paint.  Note the faux "shadows":


More to come!

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