Whew! The stickies were all gone by Thursday evening! I had purchased a new batch of Sculp-Epox for this project and, apparently, I was just used to how quickly my 11 year old containers of the same stuff set up. With the small scale stuff, those quart containers last a LONG time! Haha! I hadn't worked with fresh Sculp-Epox since 1997! 
I quickly primed the epoxy sculpted areas with sandable auto body primer. (that's the gray stuff) The primer isolates the epoxy (and any exposed fiberglass areas) from the paint work to prevent any odd chemical reactions and gives the paint something to hang onto. The little horse was already primed in white when I got him so that gave me the nifty, time saving, idea of having the first coat of his paint job come out of a can of white glossy auto lacquer! It was a FABULOUS idea. . .bound to make up for the fact that I was finally starting to paint at about 8 pm on Thursday evening with 19 hours to the time when it needed to be delivered. First one can. . . hmmmmm. . .that didn't exactly cover the first side very completely. . . did I only buy two cans of this stuff? With nothing but blind hope, I confidently sprayed on the second can of glossy white lacquer and came up short. There was still more than 1/2 of the piece still showing the gray primer underneath. *sigh* So I had to spend 45 minutes that I couldn't spare running to Farm and Fleet for more paint. 
When I got back to spraying. . .I let my anxiety rush things and ended up with a few drips! AAAHHHHHHH! Repeat after me. . .never ever EVER E-V-E-R touch a drip in half dried lacquer! It's the painting equivalent to picking a teensy scab and ending up with flesh eating bacteria trying to consume your entire arm in under a minute! You know you shouldn't keep touching it. . .but you can't help yourself. . .and the yukky blobby mess just grows and grows even though you're convinced that *this* swipe/dab/blot/ will smooth it out and solve everything! Did I finally leave it alone to dry like 
a sane person? Nope, it would have been too easy for me to sand it smooth later. . . I had to try the old nail polish trick of applying an extra heavy layer of the same stuff. I thought I could knock down the bumps by drowning the half dried and sticky layer in fresh lacquer with all of it's wondrous and smelly fast evaporating thinners! Naturally, that made more drips. . . that I touched. For my own sanity, I finally had to abandon the entire project for a couple of hours to let everything dry. At that point, I was WAY too traumatized to take photos of the damage. . . I was just trying to figure out a quick way to 
cover it all up and get on with the show! I do think I can see it on this photo of his rear end. . . there is a faint gray area visible on the side of the foal's left haunch sort of due east of that shiny highlight near his tail. it was about 5 inches long and three inches wide, and that photo doesn't give anywhere near an idea of how utterly horrible it looked. :^( Actually, come to think of it, I'd probably already "worked" on it a little bit at this point. By "worked" I mean calmly and sensibly (after my earlier meltdown) sanding it lightly and reapplying a * very light* spritz of lacquer to the area. It was smoother. . .but it was still not good.
When I got back to spraying. . .I let my anxiety rush things and ended up with a few drips! AAAHHHHHHH! Repeat after me. . .never ever EVER E-V-E-R touch a drip in half dried lacquer! It's the painting equivalent to picking a teensy scab and ending up with flesh eating bacteria trying to consume your entire arm in under a minute! You know you shouldn't keep touching it. . .but you can't help yourself. . .and the yukky blobby mess just grows and grows even though you're convinced that *this* swipe/dab/blot/ will smooth it out and solve everything! Did I finally leave it alone to dry like 
a sane person? Nope, it would have been too easy for me to sand it smooth later. . . I had to try the old nail polish trick of applying an extra heavy layer of the same stuff. I thought I could knock down the bumps by drowning the half dried and sticky layer in fresh lacquer with all of it's wondrous and smelly fast evaporating thinners! Naturally, that made more drips. . . that I touched. 
cover it all up and get on with the show! I do think I can see it on this photo of his rear end. . . there is a faint gray area visible on the side of the foal's left haunch sort of due east of that shiny highlight near his tail. it was about 5 inches long and three inches wide, and that photo doesn't give anywhere near an idea of how utterly horrible it looked. :^( Actually, come to think of it, I'd probably already "worked" on it a little bit at this point. By "worked" I mean calmly and sensibly (after my earlier meltdown) sanding it lightly and reapplying a * very light* spritz of lacquer to the area. It was smoother. . .but it was still not good. 
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