Chester the Rooster - WIP - Part II

A garage sale and some seriously warm Colorado weather allowed me to pull Chester out of the garage. Its been a while since he has seen the light of day but I'm ready to really get some serious work done on him.

The first task was what will hopefully be the final sanding. I got a little sloppy in places with the wood putty the last time around and that caused me to spend more time sanding than I would like. I also broke out the carving tools and carefully re-emphasized a couple areas where I had lost the detail either through priming or sanding.

The romance side, sanding complete

The money side, sanding complete

After a quick dusting off with the garage compressor I applied the third coat of primer. I stippled most of this on to try and remove the brushstrokes from the broader flat areas like the saddle and the saddle blankets. 

I was happy enough with the current progress to go ahead and order some of the paints I needed. I'll be using a technique that I haven't tried before to, hopefully, get rich bolder colors but its expensive. The primary paint will be artist tube oil colors but by themselves, and without using additives, they take a long time to dry and I want to be a bit quicker to the finish than that. Based on the recommendation of a professional carousel horse painter I'll be mixing the tube colors with enamel paints to be both thin them out and to create a faster drying and harder coat of paint. Hopefully it will work out as advertised. All in all each color will run about $40 a pop, so I didn't get everything. I'll be focusing on the head and neck first so those are the paints I'll be starting with; naples yellow, primary yellow, red magenta, ivory black and burnt sienna.

The money side primer on and drying, one last sanding light sanding session to go, nothing coarser than 400 grit

The romance side, primer on and drying. I'll let this dry for a couple of days before the sanding and painting start.