happy birthday ber

ber was back from london to see her bro graduate and decided she might as well celebrate her birthday while back in LA.

i've been getting ber "the office" themed gifts for the past two years. i presented her a dundie award for best piano sales person and i think a dunder mifflin mug last year. the year prior to that i had given her a dwight bobble head in immersed in lime green jello.

i ended up keeping up with "the office" theme.
ber had bought me a this back in 2007 on her trip to hk.
it's a oyako to-fu cell phone charm.

so i decided to paint her a custom dwight to-fu kubrick.

this was what came with the package - a diy (do-it-yourself) mother to-fu, child to-fu and a mini sharpie.

the figure came apart conveniently for primer and painting. although i discovered towards the end of the project the layer of primer and acrylic paint made it difficult to put the joints back into the sockets so i had to sand them down.

i bought new and smaller brushes for this project since i had trouble with kel's custom qee.

this was how my desk looked like. the mask was for the primer and clear coat stage of the project - pretty toxic fumes. i had to find interesting and inventive ways to prop the pieces up for painting without touching the wet paint. so i macgyvered up and used anything that was around me like fast food chopsticks, ink cartridges for pens and so forth.

i also had to figure a way to dry the pieces without it laying on it's side. some pieces i left on their props, some pieces i cut holes into the cardboard.

i also implemented tape masking to get cleaner straight lines and that worked out pretty well for the sleeves and tie.

and this was the final product. while looking for my primer i also discovered i had a bought a can of clear coat enamel i had forgot about and thus didn't use for kel's qee. also i think i over did it with the clear coat, because there was a build up of the run off at the edges and it reacted with the acyclic paint and you can see some cracking.

and this was my reference photo.

this project as a good learning experience. working with acrylics is tough because it dries so fast and mixing paint to get custom colors is a difficult process too. plus i found myself having to go back and retouch certain parts so i had to to remix colors again make sure i had the right shade. the paint was also very sensitive. i'm not sure if it was because i didn't have enough or if i didn't have the correct primer but it the paint cracked and peeled very easily. the clear coat at the end helped remedy that though.

in the end it took me about 2 days to complete. the majority of the time was literally waiting for the paint to dry. i'm not completely happy with the final product, but it turned out well.

happy birthday ber!
(even if it's not your birthday yet)