You can sleep when your dead

We primered the car on the Monday night after work and the primer was super bright yellow, dad informed me it would be due to the top coat, which makes total sense, honestly I'm not sure why I didn't work that out in the first place hah. Anyway I had a bit of a go on the door at spraying, dad made it look easy and after a few goes I gave it back to him, made sweeping motions were no where near his.

With one of my front rims at the rim repairer and the other doing nothing, I cleaned it up and sprayed it to better fit the theme, I bought the rims polished, however for the theme I resprayed my rims back to a flat satin black. So chuffed with the end result, just check that finish!! Boss...

My confidence in my skills and what the hell Im actually attempting was brought back to surface last night when I let the results of my airbrushing draft ups speak for themselves as I hoped would be the case. I spent a few good hours afterwards with a good friend of mine (Trav - Stikerz) who like myself is naturally creative and has an eye for making things work, he works as a graphic designer/sign writer and has really helped me with all my stenciling for the car so not only did I get to hang out with my friend took a huge vital step in the progress. Another late night it was with about 3 hours there, got home around 12am.

Tuesday, with the car drying over night, dad finished up work early to come home and spray the car the base coat. When I got home from work I had a look, the colour was lighter than I had expected (sometimes its hard to judge a small panel of colour on a chart compared to it on a large surface such as a car) but after my initial "shit" when I opened the roller door the more I looked at it over the next 30 seconds the more I absolutely love the colour I picked out. To be honest even without the battle theme on the car I love the fawn, considering how many options there are available from paint suppliers I'm so happy I picked this one, not a shade lighter or a shade darker, so a big win there! Also so many cars have been done in almost every colour I love the fact that most aren't ballsy enough to go one like this and to be honest I kind of like the fact that some people will not doubt hate the fawn, sheep your disdain feeds me XD

After going inside and having some tea I came back out ready to start stenciling, as usual I have my abilities and ambitions mixed up... Well not entirely true, my abilities are there but the time I take to do things, Ergh not so good. Next stepping stone for me was to aesthetically complete the car, and while I was looking at the fresh paint drying on the car last night it was a little unnerving knowing what I had in mind to do with it, a beautiful blank canvas ready for something either amazing or something amazingly bad. Not only that, a car I've busted my ass on for the last few weeks, not to mention my dad taking the time to spray the car, is not exactly a piece of paper I can pull off my easel and start again if I screw up.
So went back out to assess my blank canvas, I gingerly put on the first stencils ready to lay my first airbrushing on the car, it was one of those moments where the cautious side of me started yelling "Really?You're really going to do this on this nice fresh paint job!?" but throwing that little voice to the wind I applied the stencil, fired up the compressor, ran my paint through the gun and started the stenciling! My new airbrush, was only a cheapy $70 gun but has a double action trigger, changeable tips and is something I can work with (the top feed or gravity feed gun though is a pain, spilled my paint on myself more times than I can remember fuuu) my first few runs with the whole set up (paint, compressor, gun, reducer ratio) were good, following the instructions of the mixing ratios for the paints on the bottle was wrong, rather than a 3:1 ratio it was more an 8:1, alot of thinners was needed to make the paint mix and not clump, in the end I was just going by feel. I suspect measurements need to be adjusted accordingly temperature as well.

I did my first few attempts on some cardboard and as soon as I started spraying the purple top coat I got super excited I could feel my vision take life, I love moments like these, they are few and far between in life  so it made me want to bounce off the walls as it was solid confirmation that yes I could make this work!

It took a few hours to do the first few stencils as I took my time getting to know all my materials,being able to see my photoshop come to life in front of me gave me huge amounts of energy, it was around quarter to one when I decided I really should get sleep, I probably would of stayed up another few hours if not for work several hours later.

Well it was mid week, kind of losing track of days to be honest I had so much I have to deal with and only can process so much at once. Having any kind of decent sleep seemed like a bit of a luxury at this point, however it's wasn't all doom and gloom. The car had been painted and was on track for being ready by the weekend....

Wednesday - was confident I could finish off my stenciling (passenger front guard, bottom door panels, passenger rear bar) again was kept up til around the same time this time I'd started airbrushing the runs and streaks, this was another "you sure you want to do this mandi?" moment as it looked really good with just the battle stencils. 

My first guard the drivers rear I was a little suss on but the great thing with airbrushing is generally the more you add the better it looks, so the more depth I added the more it really came to life :) while stenciling my friend the possum came back to which we had a bit of a stand off, it looked like it was going to jump on the car which was never going to happen under my watch, it all panned out okay though, I didn't have to turn him into a hat and he didn't have to claw me up :)

Thursday - Still with work to be done, after I got home from work I got straight back into it, cranked the tunes, the jim beam black label and the airbrush.I also called the rim repairer and hells yea one 17x9 +12 Varrstoen rim was ready, sooo happy! Tru Wheels came through with the goods, so excited! So again finishing up near 1am I had some of the passenger side missile stenciling to re fill in and the rear passenger guard and door to brush. 

Next post will be the finish up of the car enough for Round 1 and how the weekend went!