Pileated Woodpecker WIP14

Most of you have no idea how hard it is to paint a sculpture.
There is almost no room for error. You have to make sure everything is coated so that nothing shows through but at the same time, you have to use as little paint as possible and as thin as possible. This is especially true for anything that has high/fine sculpted detail, which basically describes every last millimeter of this entire sculpture.

This might not be the most complex but it's turning out to be the hardest paint job I've yet to do and certainly the most technical. The paint has to be extra thin, even thinner than what you would normally use, because if it's too thick, it will fill in and swallow up the feather detail and look nasty. But I have to apply it rather thickly so it will sink down into the all the feather lines. I have been using an airbrush, which does help a lot, but there's only so much detail work I'm able to do with that. Probably something I need to practice using more.

The main problem with using acrylic paints thinned down that much is that they don't coat that well. Thankfully, I have these Cel-Vinyl paints by Color Cartoon (which I think I mentioned a few times before). They were originally created for painting animation cells but they work wonders on pretty much whatever else you'd like. They coat AMAZINGLY well. You can completely cover over black with only one or two layers of white. And they dry really, really flat. AND you can mix them with regular acrylic paints too.

I'm really hoping to get one of these done soon. It's so close I can taste it. After 5 years I'll finally have it finished.