Chester the Rooster - Pt 5 - Back at it

I realized that its been a long time since I have worked on Chester, since October of 2019 as a matter of fact. The game plan at that time was to have him ready for Thanksgiving of 2019. Obviously I didn't make that goal. My mom certainly isn't getting any younger so I need to get moving on Chester. Its hard to tell how much work is actually left, I still don't have a lot of free time and this isn't something you can sit down for 15 minutes and get something accomplished.

For the most part the "money" side is finished (Chester's left side) it will need some touch up but the colors and carving are more basic on that side (its the side you don't see when you are looking at the carousel, its also the side that you typically mount from). The "romance side needs the most work. This sessions effort was focused on the wings, butt and saddles. I made pretty good progress over about a 3 hours stretch and just getting the initial saddle colors blocked in helped immensely with his appearance.

I'll try and carve out some more painting time for Chester as soon as I can.

This is where I had left off back in 2019. The saddle needs to be blocked and the wings, butt, tail and legs need the most work.

This is the section I focused on for this session

Breaking out the paints. The jars on the left hold the enamel equivalents of the primary oil paints I'm using. The oil paints in the middle and a selection of fairly good sized brushes on the right.

At the end of three hours, the saddle is all blocked in (both sides) and the wings and butt feathers have been refined quite a bit. Just getting the saddle done improved the look quite a bit. The saddle blanket will eventually be a fairly bold red (as close to USMC red as I can get) with blue striping. The leather will have a faint red tone to it when its done with black edging. I'm working on making a stencil so I can get the USMC EGA painted in the corner of the blanket (undecided on if it will go on both sides or not at this point).