There are no mistakes, just happy accidents.

  I've always been a competitive person. As a kid I would be furious if I didn't get all 4 railroads in Monopoly, and I wouldn't even think about passing on a double jump in checkers. When I started to play organized sports my Mom says she wouldn't talk to me for the rest of the day after a loss because she knew what a jerk I would be. With this knowledge I'm not surprised at all how I react when I hear there is an online model building contest.

  So far I have entered two and have not placed in either. From what I hear they were both pretty close, but as my coach always told me "second place is the first loser", and I wasn't even second... Plamocon is currently running a contest as a warm up to this years online portion of the GBWC called the "1st Annual Gunpla Grand Prix". There are two divisions, modified and out of box and has had a fairly large turnout when compared to the GBWC entries they received last year.

  Now, in full disclosure I had already decided that I wanted to build my MG Shin Matsunaga with or without the contest. I was wanting to build a white kit that I could weather and make a small diorama base for, but the possibility of avenging my previous losses provided the additional motivation that I needed to not only get started, but to really go all out and push myself on technique and overall design. I wanted to try my hand at some light modifications and also give sponge chipping a try.

  I started by detailing my inner frame and even going as far as to panel wash, add decals and use some top down shading.

Then it was time for base coats and basic shading/highlighting, then decals.

  Egggzellent...everything is going according to plan! Now, time to try this "sponge chipping" . I took time and watched several videos on YouTube, then practiced for a few minutes on a plastic spoon. I used three colors, going from light to dark and some artist grade white spirit in between layers to give a sense of the paint wearing away slowly around the chips and layers and layers of damage. I gotta admit, I was pretty darn happy with where this was going!

  The competitive part of my brain is screaming, "Yes!! Victory! I mean I'm almost done and this is hands down the best work I have done so far. Surely I will at least place!", but then the artistic side of my brain....the side that has been responsible for the majority of the bad decisions I have made so far in my life decided to speak up..

"Ummm Chris?"

"Yes crazy, art guy part of my brain?"

"You know...this kit is REALLY white. I mean, a kit this white would surely show some dust right? I mean,      even if there is no dust then a wash of some sort would make the whole thing more interesting to look at.   Doncha think? Tonal variation and all that?"

 "Well...maybe brain. But I'm almost done and I really don't want to screw up at this point. I mean I could just flat coat it and walk away and I don't think anyone would argue that it was finished."

"Maybe Chris, maybe. I just thought you wanted to win...." 

  My art brain and competitive brain have joined forces.

  I mixed up an acrylic filter of Model Master rust. I initially wanted to do an enamel filter because it's so much easier to correct mistakes with enamel, but I couldn't find that bottle of paint and seriously I've been painting for over 20 years! What could possibly go wrong?!

  That's when disaster struck...I'm guessing I mixed the filter too thin, or it was too cold, or the Earth wasn't spinning fast enough or Karma was getting me back for laughing when that chick at the Oscar's fell, but no matter the reason my beautiful rust filter beaded all over the entire kit. I didn't get any pictures of this part because I was too busy trying to get this vile demon liquid off of my beautiful kit, but time was against me and the damage had already been done. Tiny rust colored dots all over my kit turned my Zaku into an earth tone version of MC Hammer's pants circa 1989.

  My art brain took over and went into panic mode. Immediately I grabbed the rubbing alcohol and some brushes and started VERY gently streaking the rust colored paint downwards and tried not to damage the acrylic top coat underneath. For what seemed like an eternity I slowly worked section after section turning the tiny droplets into hardcore streaking. I rushed back to my paint booth and applied a few thin layers of my base coat on top to blend out the worst parts, but still all of my chipping, my hours and hours of tedious chipping had been washed out to the point of oblivion.

  That's when I made the call. Ring ring "Yo Z whaddap?" I heard Harry's voice and knew it would be all right. I explained to him the situation, he laughed, I cried, but in the end just the simple sentence "Dude, why don't you just add another layer of chipping? It will probably look better than before you screwed it up."

  Now admittedly this is weathered way more than I had originally envisioned it, but it's considerably better than the polka dotted mess that I had less than 24 hours prior.

  Will I win the contest? Probably not, there are some really nice kits lined up and still over a month left, but more important than a free kit I was reminded that 1) it's just paint and 2) it's just a model. Stop taking things so seriously and just have fun. Screw up's suck, but without mistakes you can't learn how to fix or avoid them. Like my daughters dance teacher told her, "I don't want you to make small mistakes, I want you to make BIIIIG mistakes! At least then I know you are trying to improve!"

                                                                        "There are no mistakes, just happy accidents" - Bob Ross

-Big Z