Quick Sketch

I have been so busy with painting maps the last month and a half that I am going insane.  It's all stuff that I've never attempted before, so the experience is invaluable and I'm really learning a whole lot of new information.  But oy vey, this is stressful.  So here's my half-hour meditation on not knowing what I'm doing.

Mjolnir finished

Finished this in early June, just got around to putting the images together.  My first few bona fide freelancer gigs have been (and continue to) kick my ass.  Fair warning:  boring photo's incoming.

I ended up applying many more coats of plasti-dip than I anticipated; totally fine, kinda wanted to test the limit of how many coats v. loss of details.  Also, wanted it to be sturdy enough to whack unsuspecting visitors without the paint cracking.  That means a fairly thick, flexible undercoat.

Started off paint with a darker steel, applied by brush in 3 cross-coats to minimize visible brush strokes.  Followed that up with a lighter silver coat, selectively applied to avoid the recesses.

Worked in various blues, greens, browns, and yellows to dirty it up.  I'll admit it, making a huge mess distressing it was fun.  Followed that with another highlight pass of the silver.

Additionally, I painted woodgrain on both ends of the handle and on the top of the hammer.  Had no clue what I was doing, but I think it turned out alright.

  Next up was wrapping the handle.  Used some old cracked leather cut into two 1.5" strips.  Got those glued in and added two leather rings at the top & bottom to hide the ends.  Only problem:  leather was a weird olive green color.  Painted the leather with a few different colors and sealed the whole thing.  Ta-daaa!  One Mjolnir, hand made of foam and lightweight, but still sturdy enough to smack somebody upside the head.
I had planned to attach a leather thong (a la Marvel's version), but neglected to build anything to actually attach it to in the inner structure.  Could have used my super-industrial glue maybe, but i would much rather that be attached structurally.  Missed the opportunity.

...and while I was waiting on glue coats/plasti-dip/paint to dry, started this:

Having just set up my workshop, I have a lot of scrap materials lying about.  Decided to make the world's nerdiest trashcan enclosure.  Will be painted up as R2R9, one of the red R2 units.  I'm sticking really close to the actual measurements in terms of size, so this will just look like a slapdash R2 in the corner of the workshop.  Lots more to do.