"Murray River Princess" cont...

Many hours of work and late nights have gone into the following stages of producing the "Murray River Princess"...or Murray River Cod Puppet.

Painting a puppet in the style I do is always a task you fear to begin...but as you progress...you begin to see your puppet take on new life.After painting the majority of the body segments, it was time to prepare the brass chimney stacks. This meant cutting the tubing and drilling the holes into the upper body either side of the cabin. This had to be done before painting the cabin to be sure everything would fit in place.
Then it was onto painting the cabin. I had a few things in mind for the colour scheme. But in the end, I went with the following. Although maybe not 100% to the actual Murray Princess cabin, I thought that the red roof would add a little more "depth" and visual aid the effect I was after. I also shaded some yellow into the roof to help break up the solid red. This gave a great result.
Now I "flared" the tips of the brass tubing to give that real "paddle steamer" look to the chimney stacks...And its time to wait for the paint to fully dry before I assemble everything...