Not so magic...

I was originally going to title this, "My Little Modification: Repainting is Magic" but I found that I was less satisfied with my repaint job than I thought I would be.

First off: it's pretty much impossible to find really tiny tubes of acrylic at the craft store. So I bought the cheapest brand of large tubes. I almost didn't do it, after totting up in my head how much it would cost just to repaint the Derpy. But I did anyway. (In retrospect: I could have mixed for some of the colors I needed. Oh well. I wasn't thinking about that at the time).

A couple challenges in doing this: It's very hard to get the acrylic to be brushstroke-free and smooth. I suspect a better grade of paint might rectify that (but I wasn't going to pay $9 a tube). I don't think thinning it with water would help - as it was, it was hard to get good coverage with the paint (I tried using white as a "primer coat" in one case but that didn't help as much as I thought.)

Also, I had forgotten how much my hand shakes when gripping something like a tiny paintbrush and trying to concentrate on getting a straight line. I don't notice shaking with knitting or crochet; I suppose it's different muscles involved and maybe I do just grip too tightly. (I get bad hand fatigue if I have to write fast for a long time, and I think that's a similar issue).

But still: Derpy:



I think this is actually the best of my repaints. This used to be a Rainbow Dash. The grey paint gave good coverage (the yellow for the hair, not as much). You can't see it in the photo but I did "derp" her eyes.

This one was sort of a practice, both for the painting and for the use of the gold pen. I decided to repaint yet another of the multiple Flower Wishes I had. I've renamed this one Bluette. (A bluet is a type of small wildflower).



The photo's kind of dark but I could not get a good one with flash. (Same with the next pony)

And this is my attempt at repainting (Sweetie Blue) to be the pony I made up (Scholastica). I'm disappointed at how poorly the yellow covered the original blue color, even with a couple of coats. Oh well.



Yes, she has both a wristwatch and glasses; the glasses are drawn on using an extra-fine gold paint pen, which I also used to draw her "cutie mark" of the lamp of knowledge.

I'm not sure what I'd change if I were doing more....maybe dip the whole pony into white acrylic paint (maybe thinned down a little) to provide a plain "primer coat." Or maybe do thinner coats and let the paint dry better between them. (I was impatient and it is also humid here; possibly some of the problems with Scholastica's coloring are that I didn't wait enough). I'm not sure if extremely fine-grit sandpaper used between coats would help or even work.

The eyes are the hardest part, partly because, as I said, my hands shake when doing such fine work. Maybe more practice and trying to keep a looser grip on the paintbrush would help. Or getting some non-hardening modeling clay to hold the figures for me while I paint, so I'm not holding with one hand and painting with the other...maybe being able to stabilize my right hand on my left wrist (kind of like the painters you see who use a stick to lean their wrist against while they paint) would help.

(At any rate: not sure I'd do more of these. Then again....in the upcoming swap, if I get blind bag ponies I already have, I might get tempted to do more repaints. In a way it is kind of fun because it feels almost a little "naughty" - you are taking something corporate-made and totally redoing it to suit yourself).

I also have to confess I picked up some really inexpensive Scholastica-hair-blue yarn as well, with half a though of (say it with me) crocheting ANOTHER pony, and making this one my so-called OC pony. (After all: I already have all the felt colors I would need, and I have the gold embroidery floss that could be used to embroider glasses frames. And I can even imagine how to make very straight "controlled" hair with a bun, unlike the hanging-loose hair of the other ponies I've made.)