I was thumbing through Thingiverse looking for something fun to print. I came across a cute Little Groot figurine. I thought my wife would like it. Guardians of the Galaxy is one of her favorite movies.



I didn't scale it up at all. I thought the size was pretty much on the money.



It came out pretty nice. It needs a little clean up work, but not bad. I just wish there was a little more detail in the model.





I wanted to try the acetone trick to help smooth things out. It works on ABS. Let's see if it works on PLA.



I lined a paint can with paper towels and held them in place with magnets. I then wet the paper towels with acetone.



I stood Groot on the lid…



…and then lowered the lid in place.



I let it sit and soak up the acetone fumes overnight, but there was hardly any difference. I poured in more acetone and let it sit a few more days. No change. I guess PLA doesn't melt with acetone.

With that experiment out of the way, I moved onto the paint job.



I started out with a few coats of black primer.



I wanted Groot to look like he's planted in the base. I wasn't happy with just painting it brown. I wanted the pot to look like it's filled with dirt or something.



I cut up a wine cork into tiny little pieces.



I then covered the top of the pot and poured glue all over it to secure everything in place. A few additional coats of primer will also help bind everything together.



Not bad. I'll dry-brush on some color to give it a nice effect.



I first started out by slopping on some darker colors. I haven't painted figurines in over 25 years; not since I was a kid. So I'm crossing my fingers that this turns out even half way decent. I'm basically using this as a test run for other models I have in mind. I painted the pot white, dry-brushed some color onto the cork, and painted Groot with whites, browns, and greens.



There wasn't much detail in the model for the eyes, so I kind of had to just plop on some black where I thought the eyes should be.



I used to paint D&D figurines back in the late 80s when I was a kid, so this didn't come out half bad considering it's been a good 25 years since I've painted something… and my wife loves it!