Be REALLY Brave - Day 5

Today was the day that all my progress so far (and I really like what I've done so far) got covered up with tar. Yep, you read right: tar. The next step for this piece is to use a concoction of asphalt crack filler and mineral spirits to cover up the whole darn thing. The usual, paralyzing thoughts came into play: don't mess up, you like what you've got, don't mess up, DON'T MESS UP! I had to take a deep breath to put that first brush load of black on my beautiful clean colors! I was able to shove the defeatist thoughts aside only because I'm on a deadline, and frankly I had no choice. I plowed ahead and let the tar fly.

I did, however, have a big frustration with my supplies. The tar is supposed to thin down with the mineral spirits. I've done it before and it worked fine. The viscosity of the mixture is supposed to go from goo to the consistency of glue. It wouldn't thin down. In fact, the tar and the mineral spirits wouldn't even mix (think oil and vinegar). The result was that I had to use the very, very thin mineral spirits with only a bit of the color provided by the tar. Not quite the effect I was looking for. I hope it still works.



Step 9: Cover the whole thing with tar. You can see in this photo how thin the tar was. The whole piece, at this point in the process, should be totally black with no/little color showing through. Since the mixture was so thinned down, I did it twice.

Even the side view looks pretty cool!

Close-up. And below, a super close close-up.

I'm off to a soccer tournament in Lansing for the weekend so now it sits until Monday. Wow, I'm really cutting this one close (too close!) as it is due at the Kalamazoo Civic Theatre for our show on Wednesday.

Have a good weekend.

Lorrie