6 Panel Art Project – Part 7
6 Panel Art Project – Part 7

6 Panel Art Project – Part 7

Progress so far:

PART 1 – PAINTING THE DARK PANELS
PART 2 – TRYING TO CUT TIN WITH SNIPS
PART 3 – TAPING THE TREE
PART 4 – PAINTING THE LIGHT PANELS
PART 5 – LIQUID SILVER LEAF
PART 6 – DISASTER STRIKES!
PART 7 – PAINTING REPLACEMENT LIGHT PANELS

As of 2 weekends ago, the only part of my 6 panel project that still needed paint was the tree on the middle “daytime” panel:

299h

That’s it!  So simple.  It should have been over and done with in 20 minutes.  But it wasn’t.  I settled down at my art table in the girl cave 2 Sunday’s ago to paint the tree with the liquid silver leaf.  I shook the bottle as directed, then realized the afternoon sun was right in my eyes.  I stood up, closed the black velvet blackout curtain, and sat back down.  I decided to give the bottle one more shake but forgot I’d already unscrewed the cap… OMFG!!!

The silver leaf went everywhere.  All over my panel, all over me, all over my desk… some got on the floor.  It was a complete, toxic, oily mess.  I ran into the master bathroom with my panel and stuck it in the sink to wash off what I could, but the sink was too small.  I ran downstairs to the kitchen and tossed it into that sink & used a hand scrubber to get as much silver off as I could [and in the process irreparably clogged up the scrub brush… sigh].  I did get most of it off.  But as I posted that evening, my panel was fairly ruined, mostly from the water damage [the panels are canvas board, which has a cardboard base, which is why I rarely use canvas board anymore]:

one of my 6 panels is basically ruined after spilling silver leaf paint on it        one of my 6 panels is basically ruined after spilling silver leaf paint on it

I let it dry overnight and was happily surprised the next morning to see it wasn’t warped [my biggest fear] and it looked fairly salvageable.

When I got home from work that Monday I sat down at my art desk to try and repair the damage.  I decided that instead of taping the tree I’d paint the tree silver first, then go over the parts of the background that needed work:

299a

The tree came out great, but when I tried to touch up the background it just wasn’t working.  It’s nearly impossible to paint a gradated background in bits and parts.  It’s sooooooooo much easier to do it with large, sweeping strokes, because you’re going so fast the paint is still wet, making it easy to blend the colors as you go, from light to dark or dark to light.  So I ended up taping the tree:

299c3

You can kind of see in this closeup what I mean about doing the background bit by bit versus all at once.  The background in the middle of this shot looks like CRAP – the pink goes up and down like a hilly hot mess instead of straight across and blended:

299b3

So after the tree was taped [which takes forever, but it had to be done], I settled down on the girl cave floor and redid the entire background:

299d2

Then removed the tape the following day.  And realized I was still screwed.  Each time I taped the tree some paint inevitably collected up against the tape, creating a thicker patch of paint and forming a ridge once the tape was removed.  After TWO tapings and TWO background paintings, there were some very large ridges:

299i        299j

I tried to hide the ridges with liberal application of liquid silver leaf, but it didn’t really work.  And upon closer inspection, I realized my other 2 light/daytime panels [which I thought were done] also had unsightly ridges:

299k        299l

[Wow, those 2 pics look like they’re meant to go side by side LOL!!!]

So yeah.  This past Saturday I made a trek to the art supply store 3 towns over and picked up some more 11×14″ canvas board, some new paint colors, and THIS awesomely huge brush [the 2nd pic shows my awesomely huge new brush next to it’s pink-handled predecessor]:

299t        299s2

Which I just realized I spent $32.09 on!!!  OMG… but it was totally worth it!  Although I would have never spent that much if I’d noticed the price at the store.  Holy cow.  It’s a Regency Gold Synthetic Decorate Brush, 1½” wide, for future reference.  Because I would definitely buy it again.  It’s that good… The brush I used the first time around was half that size.  The new, larger brush made super quick work of the gradated background on the 3 new canvas board panels:

299e2        299f

Here are closeups – I love how smooth the color transitions came out, and how each one has some striation.  I have positioned them one on top of each other so you can see the color transition from daylight blue down to early morning sunrise:

299o4 299n2 299m3

Of course, my first attempt at photographing my newly painted panels resulted in this, because cat:

299p

I only used 5 colors – Cadmium Yellow Medium, Cadmium Orange, White, Alizarin Crimson, and Phthalocyanine “Phthalo” Blue:

299g

Alizarin Crimson is one of the new colors I bought last Saturday and I think it’s my new favorite.  It mixes like BUTTER.  Not literally.  It’s just soooo smooth when mixed with other colors.  It’s one of Bob Ross’ favorites, so I recognized the name at the art store and decided to give it a try.  I think Bob was on to something…  He also likes Cadmium Yellow & “Phthalo” Blue, which have always been on my “go to” list for color basics.  I learned about them back in college when I took a few painting classes as electives.

SO.  Next up will be FREE-HANDING the silver tree onto the 3 NEW light/daytime panels.  Wish me luck…  and then I can move onto the final stage, which is still a secret 🙂  The only one who knows my plans is hubby, and he’s skeptical, but has faith in my abilities.  Love you, hubby!!!

I’ll end this post with pics of 2 meals I’ve managed to cook this week:  grilled veggies [eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, and one lonesome veggie dog we found in the freezer] last Saturday and crock-pot chili Tuesday:

299q        homemade slow cooker crock pot vegetarian chili

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6 Comments

    1. Nine Dark Moons

      well, i’m a “journey” person, versus a “destination” person, so it’s all about the journey for me, and this journey, while full of speed bumps, has also been quite fun to navigate 🙂

    1. Nine Dark Moons

      Thankfully the silver splattered all over paper i place on my art table to protect it, so I just scooped the paper up and that was that. I had to scrub the bathroom sink (white porcelain) with nail polish remover to get the silver off of it… the kitchen sink is already silver metal, so it blended. That liquid leaf is scary stuff! There is still some on the floor of the girl cave. Haven’t tackled that yet, thankfully not much. And I had to scrub my stomach with nail polish remover b/c when it landed all over my shirt and shorts it bled through onto my skin. Nasty. And thanks!

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