Waiting

I’m waiting for some POSCA paint markers to come in the mail….. once I get them I’ll do a write up of the different painting techniques I’ve used so far on Munny. soon.

Priming Minni Munny

Once I had a basic design I could start painting my Munny. After reading around the forums I decided I wanted to prime him first. It’s not absolutely necessary to prime, but since I wanted to experiment with many different mediums it seemed like the safest way to go. If you are using any oil paint you need to prime. If you are using many layers of acrylic you should also prime. Without priming you run the risk of your paint staying sticky, or even bubbling.

Rustoleum Auto Primer

People on the forums use all different things as a prime coat. There are all sorts of spray primers, or you can even use gesso if you feel like painting it on by hand.  I went with Rustoleum auto primer, because it can be sprayed on, and it can be sanded. This way I could avoid brush strokes on my base coat. I went with grey because it is versatile (and my favorite color). If you know you want a very bright, vibrant  Munny you might want to use white primer, or black for a dark Munny.

At this point you will want to wash your Munny with warm soapy water to get any grease from the factory off, and anything else that will keep your paint from sticking (like your dirty little paws). I then took my Munny apart and masked off the the joints using painter’s tape. This is important so they will fit back together and move smoothly once re-assembled.

Some Munny hands taped to dowls, ready for priming

I attached the pieces to wood dowels so I could spray them from all angles. I also got some green floral foam to stick the dowels into while the paint was drying. I’m going to be on the lookout for something better to stick them into, because the green foam is always rubbing off on my hands and everything else, and it feels really annoying.

Once they are all prepared, spray them with a bunch of really light coats. I did about four for most parts, five on some. Make sure you spray from at least a foot away so you don’t get any drips. Next I sanded them with fine grade steel wool, so they are all nice and smooth. On some parts that stick out (like the little tail) the white was showing through after I sanded him. So I threw two more coats of paint on those parts and sanded them smooth again (carefully).

Oh yeah, make sure you spray outdoors

Now I’m all ready to start painting Munny!!

Minni Munny

My first project is going to be customizing a Minni Munny. Munny is a do-it-yourself vinyl toy made by Kidrobot. You can use many sorts of medium on Munny. Some good suggestions are: acrylic paint, oil paint, Sharpies, paint markers, whatever you are comfortable with and gives you the look you want.

The first thing I did was go to the Munny Forum on Kidrobot.com and read as much as I could. I would highly recommend this to anyone starting out with a project like this. Search the forums for whatever medium you want to use and read about how it worked for other people.  If you can’t find the information you want then you are going to have to start experimenting. Which I’ve been doing a lot of on this project.

This is my quick Munny design

You can get templates all over the web to design your little dude. I got one here, they also have templates for a bunch of other vinyl toys. I did a quick one in crayon so I could get started.

Now go get one and start scribbling!

Welcome to the beginning of the blog

I’m making this blog to document my mistakes and successes on various art projects. And maybe not just art projects, probably other random stuff as well. This is my first blog, so I’ll be learning about blogging as I go also. But I probably won’t write about that too often.

Speaking of other random stuff, I just learned how to spell “beginning” through trial and error. At first I used two G’s, like this: Beggining. The spell-check told me that was wrong. I knew it had a double letter, I just didn’t think it would be an N. Huh.