Manchild at Play: Paint Your Own Gromit (Peppa Pig)

Last year Bristol was overrun with a plague of Gromits, which sounds painful but it was actually a quite pleasant infestation as it turned the entire city into one massive playground, within which every adult mentally regressed to a child and started swapping pictures of the various dogs they found, much like kids swap football stickers¹. “Do you have the pirate one?” “No, but I do have a couple of the Isambard Brunel one with the hat and sideburns.” “Awesome! I want to get the Egyptian one tomorrow!” Etc.

Having been a massive Wallace and Gromit fan at the age of seven (back when it was a British obscurity and there wasn’t a lot of merchandise), I could only observe the event with a cynicism, which was just a mask to hide the envy that I wasn’t still seven years old as I would have loved the Gromit scavenger hunt back at that age. Certain family members will attest that I had an encounter with one of the Gromit statues (the Union Jack one) involving me doing indecent actions to the thing² to the approval of the security guard in the building behind (apparently he’d seen people do worse to it). The joke was on me though, as the Gromit in question never called me back for a second date.

Basically what I’m trying to say is that I’m a Wallace and Gromit hipster. I was into it before it became mainstream, maaan.

I think one of the highlights of Gromit Unleashed for me was seeing a whole bunch of tourists and families photographing a Gromit in the middle of a park area, completely ignoring the beautiful old building behind it. There’s a metaphor for the current state of society in there somewhere, if you’re a pretentious arse. Bah, you can’t be too cynical about charity, right?

Part of the slew of merchandising were insanely popular miniature ceramic versions of the statues, which looked bloody lovely but were a bit on the expensive side (says the guy who’s happy to spend waaaay too much money on Batman and LEGO). However, there were some cheaper, 3D printed Gromits that were dubbed “Paint Your Own Gromit”. Having seen just how keen my cousin’s young ‘un was on the Gromit hunt (i.e. obsessed), it struck me that she might like a personalised Gromit for Christmas. Specifically, a Gromit painted like Peppa Pig.

Duh! It’s so obvious that Gromit and Peppa were meant to fuse together!

Step 1: Undercoating

I must have spent a few days looking in various DIY stores with my old man looking for the right shade of pink in matte paint. Apparently hot pink isn’t a popular wall colour, and when we did find the right shade it was in gloss. Ultimately, we resorted to Games Workshop at the top along from Saint Nicholas’ Market in Bristol (in Wine Street), where a very helpful chap delayed his lunch and not only supplied the exact colour of pink, but provided us a paint thinner that my Dad could use to dilute the paint enough to be used in an airbrush (one of the many toys in his garage that he’s been looking for an excuse to use).

My father’s verdict on using an airbrush? Don’t. I guess it was a bit more of a chore than it would have been to paint the thing by hand, but to his credit the undercoat had a nice even finish to work with.

Step 2: Painting

On a rainy afternoon, I cracked open my dusty paint set containing all the paints from back when I collected Warhammer 40K. I’d like to say that it took a lot of effort to paint up a Peppa Pig Gromit (Peppa Dog? Peppit? Gromma?), but just look at Peppa Pig; it’s not exactly a complicated design. I tried to go for a ballerina sort of thing as keeping the model in one uniform shade of pink would have made for a very boring figure.

Click on the following images to see my ugly mug in the process of painting it up:

There’s even a quick vid looking all around it:

Step 3: Finishing Touches

My mother was a talented seamstress in a previous life. She took one look at the model and immediately decided it was missing something. Taking one of those scrunchie scrubbing things designed for use in the shower, she opened it up and stitched it into a ballerina skirt for Gromma. Finally, she added some fancy material for the trim of the main body. The model looked a little bit fuller with these flourishes, and it meant that the little girl’s Christmas present would be a Payne family effort as we’d all had a hand in it.

Take a gander at the following final pics, click on them to zoom in:

Step 4: Box and Wrap!

In the box the model came in we stuck an image of Peppa Pig on the back, and then we wrapped the thing up. Et viola!

Almost good enough to pass for official, right? RIGHT? I have a warehouse full of these things, please say yes.

Hope you liked it, Megan. 😉

Oh, and just by mentioning Peppa and Gromit doing a fusion dance, my girlfriend went and drew it:

You can download a larger version here and see more work by Sam on her deviantART account!

Post by Sean Patrick Payne+ | January 9, 2014 at 7:56 pm | Manchild at Play (Toys), Model Kits and Figurines | 4 comments

Tags: Gromit Unleashed, modelling, Peppa Pig, Wallace and Gromit