​I followed the instructions for building a simple spray booth I found in this article in Fine Woodworking magazine. (Link to the article can be found here.) The two illustrations to the left sum up the most relevant info nicely. In summary, the booth is made out of rigid foam insulation and the sides and back are fastened together with duct tape, so it is lightweight, foldable, and easy to transport. The back panel has a hole cut in the center into which a furnace filter is placed. A box fan is set behind the hole for drawing air through the filter. 








The booth is placed in a way to take the best advantage of the room's air circulation, with sources of fresh air in front of it and a means of venting painty air behind it. Since there is no actual ductwork to contain the fumes, the booth does not exhaust them completely, but I can attest that it does cut down considerably the painty mist that otherwise hangs over my work area.  

It's important to note that this booth is only for water based paints such as acrylics. It is definitely not suitable for solvent based paints, that's a whole nuther animal entirely!  

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​And now, time for my own booth. ​​Before I did anything else, I made a mockup out of scrap cardboard, to be sure that I would like the dimensions and find it comfortable to work in. I actually wound up doing a fair bit of painting in this mock-up. 

Right, my own booth in progress. ​I used one 4' x 8' sheet of 1/2" thick insulation that I purchased at the local lumberyard. I chose a white color so that as much light as possible would be reflected back onto my work. Since the fiberglass inside the panel was very irritating to my hands, I also put duct tape over all the cut edges to contain it. It's white, so it's hard to see here.  

​Left, making sure the furnace filter is installed correctly! The arrow has to match the direction of the airflow when the filter is installed.

The filter is a basic, inexpensive one. According to the Fine Woodworking article, a higher grade of filter, one that could screen out microbes, dander, and such, would get filled with paint and plug up too quickly. Here you can also see the duct tape I applied around all the cut edges to contain irritating fiberglass.

​ I also added bulb weatherstripping around the outside of the filter, under the theory it would make the booth more airtight. I'm not sure it was worth the effort. In trying to get the weatherstripping into the gaps I sometimes had to make the gaps larger, so I may have been working counter to my purpose.
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Ah, trying to airbrush jawsets with white teeth and pink gums. Much easier said than done. First, the paint has to stick. Second, it has to go where you want it and not where you don't.


If there is even a trace of release on the cast forget it, the paint will not stick. The good news is, resin cast into silicone rubber doesn't really need release! Yay! Unfortunately the paint doesn't like to stick to bare resin either, and according to the saints at Smooth On Technical Support there are very few primers that will help. One is the Bulldog Adhesion Promoter shown here. The other is Plasticote Sandable Primer Enamel.


The areas where paint is not wanted need to be masked. What to use? Liquid frisket came first to mind, here applied with silicone shaper tools. (The frisket would quickly ruin a regular paintbrush.) For me, this was very tricky and took several hours to apply. I only attempted masking the teeth with the frisket, as I was completely daunted by the much larger surface area of the gums.

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I hit the airbrush forums looking for a mask less fiddly than frisket, and found.... Poster Putty.

Not bad, but not great either. The putty more or less worked, but the gumline was messy, and I'd like to avoid this much touching up with a paintbrush if at all possible.

And back to the message boards. Another recommended masking material- SIlly Putty!!

It kinda worked, but....

The paint built up around the edges of the putty and left these unattractive ridges along the gumline, which no amount of touching up with a paintbrush is going to fix! The message boards warned of this.

​First step in adding color- black paint airbrushed around the eyes, inside the ears ,around the nose and the front of the lower jaw. Last time I hand brushed the paint around the eyes and had a hard time controlling the texture. In other words, the paint wanted to glop up in the worst way. As long as I was meticulous about masking out the eyes and teeth, the spraying went well enough, except that it was too easy to get carried away and next thing I knew, there was more paint around the eyes than I really wanted. I was not entirely happy with Maxine's Goth look at this point.

​Second step- adding dark brown to the edges of the ears, between the brows and along the top of the nose. Some of the brown on this mask is the color of the fur and some of it is paint, I felt pretty pleased with my color matching abilities here.  I've also added more black to the insides of the ears.

Third and fourth step- adding grey paint around the underside of the muzzle and the lower jaw, and adding a little bit of cream colored paint under the eyes and on top of the cheekbones. I've also added yet more black to the inside of the ears, and more dark brown around the eyebrows, the edges of the ears, and along the bridge of the nose.





















A side view, which shows the grey on the muzzle and the lower jaw a little better. I've also airbrushed a little of the cream color between the tan area on the bridge of the nose and the white area of the muzzle to soften the transition between these areas a little.
























Fiddling and foodling. Here I've added more black to the area around the nose, and more brown to the bridge of the nose and between the eyebrows. I've also added some brown around the black shading around the eyes, with the hopes they'd tie in better visually to the rest of the mask. One thing I like about the added black above the nose is that it helps pull the viewer's eye away from the black around the eye, at least that's the hope anyway.



















And TA DAAAA!!! All done!!! I'm pretty happy with how she came out.

Left, a reference photo and freshly painted resin eye blanks. This was probably my favorite part of making this mask.

Left, straps, springs and chiffon over the tear ducts have been added, as well as Foamies ears. I also figured out how to fill in the space between the upper and lower jaw of the base with  Foamies, something the Dreamvision Creations tutorials didn't cover! The cat hair beard and mustache are my daughter Isabelle's work.

 

And the patternwork laid out on the fur. Ezzy approves.

But... (OMG!!) SEWING!!!!! This was pretty much my view of a sewing machine at this point.

Note the part on this sign that says, CLASSES! The owner of this store hosts Open Sew classes twice a week, I'd take my sewing machine and fur there and sew under her supervision. If I got stuck (which was often) she'd be there to offer advice and help out.

And finally, the fur is all sewn together. Here, draped over the base....

And here, glued down. This was one of the more harrowing parts of the process. I wound up getting rid of my old Ad Tech glue gun and buying a Surebonder glue gun with interchangeable nozzles instead. I needed the glue to flow when I pressed the trigger, and I needed it to STOP when I released it! Ezzy provided moral support.

Epoxy lip added. The tutorial recommended getting the lip more or less on and nicely detailed, and then testing to make sure the mouth opened and closed properly. I found out the hard way to MAKE SURE THE MOUTH WORKS PROPERLY ASAP.  As the epoxy was setting up and getting hard and crumbly, I  was tearing it off and reshaping it, trying to get it to fit right! Fortunately it all worked out okay in the end.

Here is the mask with black hand painted around its eyes. Its buddy "Leo" is a sacrifical....lion... to warm up on before I actually airbrush the mask.

Black airbrushed inside the ears and around the nose and lips. Next, airbrushing some brown around the edges of the ears and back on to the forehead where it had gotten shaved off previously. Leo looks like he needs a shave too.

 Brown airbrushed along edges of ears, around the nose and on the forehead. I'm feeling rather pleased with myself for matching the paint as closely as I did to the brown fur on the neck and shoulders. I've also added a little grey shading around the lips.

Lastly, areas of cream/light tan airbrushed under the eyes. Many of the wolves in my reference photos had these kinds of markings. I'm happy with how I've matched the paint on the cheeks with the color of the fur on the bridge of the nose.