Being Brave - Day 6 and DONE

I had such energy, such momentum, such excitement in the creation of this piece and you all spurred me on. Thank you so much for that. Then, I dropped you. No follow up post. No explanation. No Ta Da moment. I am so, so sorry! If you'll forgive me, I now can show you the work done during my last frenzied day of work.

If you'll remember, when last we met, I had just smeared the whole darn thing with tar. Yes, tar! The job then became getting most of the tar concoction off with mineral spirits. As it turned out the tar mixture being thinner than I wanted was a blessing. I had to work a long, LONG time with lots of rags to get the tar off and had it been thicker I can only imagine how much longer I would have been at it. Here is the piece after some/most of the tar was taken off.

It still isn't bright enough though so... I added quite a bit of oil pastel work as my last "layer". These two pictures really don't look all that different but in real life there was quite a contrast.

Above Close up: After tar removal, before pastel addition.

Below Close up: After pastels added. It's unfortunate this picture doesn't do a better job showing the pastels. The red/orange parts actually have magenta and hot pink highlights. The blue houses all have shades of light blue, dark blue and purple.

Extreme (blurry) close up. You can see how the tar stays in the cracks and crevasses. If my artistic style showed a preference for dark colors this certainly is a great way to get "dark" quickly. However, since I still love my brights, this technique provides a wonderful way to add depth and alter true bright colors with a patina.

The end of this saga is that I finished it up (without a varnishing coat, yikes), got it to the show space on time and it is now hanging proudly with the work of other Handmade Paper Guild members. In my next post I plan to show you the venue and give you a better description of the actual show. Surprise preview: This piece actually has a name and it's not called Being Brave.

Thanks for sticking with me!

Lorrie