My Biggest Hobby Fail! I Killed the Death Wing with a Brush!

Tonight, I experienced the worst kind of hobby failure a man in this hobby can put himself through. That's right, strap on your party hat because it's time for my little pity party of shame. Anyway, this all starts over the weekend. I found a color of Vallejo Air called Sand that was very comparable to Dheneb Stone, which is the base color for my Death Wing. I have also recently learned that I can wash a model after basing it and keep the base color in tact by varnishing the base and then washing - followed by rubbing alcohol to remove the excess .... but just when you thought that would be the ticket to fail town, it wasn't ...
... as much as alcohol, varnish and reverse washing sound like bad ideas, it was the Model Air that betrayed me. That is right, for all the praise I have sung (and still will) for that range of paints, I killed my Death Wing tonight.

That's right, they are gone, kaput, killed, slain. Even thought I love model air paint, I figured I would play it safe and spray the Sand color on a piece of paper to color match it to my painted models. I did and it looked fantastic. So I busted out my Death Wing and put the first model up as a test. I sprayed him down and the smooth coverage looked great and the color matched Dheneb Stone perfectly. Then I based the rest of my models and brought them upstairs to dry.

Now, I sat down and enjoyed my favorite Weapon of Mass Distraction, Skyrim, for a little while, then went back to my minis. This is where the horror set in.

The color was all wrong, the minis looked like a crappy version of Bleached Bone - even worse - the color hit the models in a very inconsistent manner that meant further coats would only make the model lumpy in some of the smoothest sections. The color also appeared way glossier and brighter than it did when it was wet or on the paper.

For a second I gave up hope. I figured I could sell the army on Ebay as a converted, primed DW army ... but then I thought of the time I put into the green stuff molding and the builds. I thought about the fact that I had pulled this whole army out of my Bits Box ... and then the U.S. Marine in me kicked in. I would not give up. I went down stairs, pulled the airbrush from its chemical bath and then I ... dropped a $24 dollar part down the drain of my sink! AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I still have not given up hope. Instead, I put my big-boy pants on and got to cranking out models, but like I said, the Death Wing is dead and so are the Unforgiven. In the morning, I might introduce you to something a little different. Sometimes we have to destroy something to create something of our own.

How about you? Have you ever messed up something so bad you just wanted to quit? How did you get back on the horse? Did you?