THIS will squash your Stegadon like the bug that it is!

Remember the 'and now for something completely different' post from a week or so back? Well, it turns out that I had no idea what I was talking about (although my PAK starter box did arrive today!!!) as my new project is far more aptly described as such. I vaguely touched on it in the last point of my last post, and the project has been approved! And its at this point that I shall wildly diverge from the gaming topic...

So what is it that I'll be drybrushing? A life sized resin cast replica of a Triceratops skeleton! (Much like the one below)


Copyrighted by Nielseno, used without permission.

Now, as you can see, this is ANYTHING but a miniature! Indeed, I'm wondering as to just what I may have gotten myself into!

I suppose I should explain how this has come about. I've been a volunteer at the Gray Fossil Museum www.grayfossilmuseum.com since before its inception (originally volunteering at ETSU's Paleo department, in the basement of Brown Hall on the ETSU campus). The museum itself opened up in the early Autumn of 2007. It should also be mentioned that the Gray fossil site has only prehistoric animals dating from 4.5 to 7 million years ago. No dinosaurs of our own, we have some gators & lots of turtles though!


Photo free to use under creative commons, by Paleoclipper used without permission

Recently they've received a resin cast replica of a Triceratops from the Discovery Museum in Shenandoah Virgina www.discoverymuseum.net (I'm pretty sure that's the correct museum, there are two with similar names in the Shenandoah area), to display on a semi-permanent basis (I say semi, as I am really unaware of the duration aside from quote: 'a long time'). The skeleton was excavated in Hells Creek Montana, and one of our lab technicians was on the original dig, and has previously volunteered at the Discovery museum.

Anyways, it came to the Gray museum prepainted, however it was rather light in color, and the staff decided to repaint it (the fossils discovered in Gray are of a much darker color, and I think that is why it struck them as needing new paint). After base coating, the staff was having difficulty highlighting the pieces, using acrylics (mixed & then applied via wadded up paper towels with the excess immediately wiped off if I understood them correctly). I suggested drybrushing & did so on a small portion of a test piece. The collections assistant lit up and asked if I'd do that to an entire piece (a vertebrae) which took me about 30 minutes to do. Well, they loved it & now I'll be drybrushing the whole thing! Lol, to date the largest piece that I've ever painted was an Armorcast Shadowsword. Drybrushing isn't too technically a skilled process, so I suppose the real challenges will be consistency & the potential danger of monotony.

Well, I don't start till Saturday (I'll take some photos of the skull, as I'll be starting on that first). In the interim, I have some new PAK hover tanks & GREL infantry to attend to!