I Actually Finished It

      Ok, I'm writing this at 5 o'clock in the morning, because what else is there to do. Anyway, I have a lot to share so lets just get into it. I managed to finish the painting and the frame. I know, I'm shocked myself. I did quite a bit of deliberating over what exactly I was going to do, so keeping in the vain of the idea of using UV paint, I kept it as freaky as possible. First the process. I did a whole lot of things I'd never done before in painting; masking, dry brushing, spray painting (I know, that one isn't really something I'd never done, just not with a painting), splatter, and finally going a little abstract, with a art deco vibe. First the masking. I had an initial plan of a center piece with stripes. Makes sense? No, but when you see the picture you will understand.

     That was right before spray painting, and as you can see there is a big circle in the center that is masked off. At this point I had no idea what was going in that center piece. Was it just going to be a shape, maybe some sort of land scape, a logo of some sort? All those things ran through my head, but I decided to just focus on the task at hand, which was laying down the black spray paint, and then the splatter. Now a lot of people will tell you that doing splatter is very simple, and in general terms it is, but in order to get exactly the look you want, there is a technique to it, and I found that out really quickly. It's a whole flick of the wrist sort of thing that I really can't explain cause it's more of a feel. Next step coming up in photo form.

 

    I know that looks really cool right? I really feel in love with the whole process and do plan on doing just a Jackson Pollack type splatter painting in the future. I really like how it came out, but it was time for the unmasking, well partially. 

      I know, it looks a bit drab, but you have to remember it's all a process. Yes, this is the part where I got a little discouraged because as I said, I really liked that splatter look. Still, I had a plan and I was sticking to it. One more technique before taking the center tape off and start really thinking about what was going there, and that was the dry brushing technique. I'm not sure if I really did a good job with this, but I like how it came out, and it is pretty much what I envisioned. The idea was not to overpower it with too much color. 

     To me, that was the right amount of color, and yes I was testing it with a UV light to see just how it would pop. Now I needed time to think about what was going in the center so it was frame time. I had a very simple idea that I tried to over complicate, but in the end I just followed the kiss concept. Keep it simple stupid. I had this grand idea of routing out edges and inlays and all kinds of things that more than likely would have been a disaster. The idea for the frame was simple, frame the picture and not overpower it, which seems easy, but when you realize I was putting UV lights on the frame to light up the picture, that becomes a little more difficult, and I have to tell you, there was a pleasant surprise from this, but I'll get to that later. I just want you to live the process as I did, but in a compressed amount of time by simply reading about it. Ok the frame was made from 1x2 wood mitered to fit together and assembled around a spare canvas so that I would have the right fitting. I got black high gloss paint and this really neat glitter spray paint to add a little pizzaz to it. The black had to go down first and then I needed that to dry over night so that I could mask off all the black and lay down the glitter silver. This is where everything went awry. I got a little excited about this part and decided it was a good idea to lay down the silver at 5 in the morning while it was still pitch black out. This turned out to be a very bad idea. I over sprayed it big time because I was getting used to how that glitter effected the whole spraying process, but then disaster happened when I went to move it back into the garage and hang it to dry. I had this old piece of plywood that was more like s sliver or stick. The idea was to pick it up with that and simply hang it to dry for the rest of the day. This did not go as planned. Turns out that little sliver of plywood was super weak and snapped right in the middle sending the frame peanut butter side down on the ground. I was devastated to say the least. I picked it up wiped a lot of the paint off and simply hung it up and left it. I needed a day to process this whole event, and I also needed to get more paint. Second can of paint clogged and I needed to wait another day to go get another can of paint, but finally I layed down the glitter silver. 

     The pictures don't really do it justice, but it really does have that glitter shimmer to it. Next step was unmasking the black paint and setting the UV strip light into the frame. This of course didn't come without it's own problems. I had to first cut the strip to length and then run it through the hole I drilled in the bottom of the frame, then I had to pull the adhesive coating off while laying down the strip, which really should have taken about 4 hands, but I only have the two. One thing I didn't realize is that when I cut the little plastic film I cut through the strip itself. I found this out after a few times of plugging it in and out a few times. It finally separated and I had to remove the whole strip. Yes, I could have just cut it to the next contact point, but that would have made it about 6 inches too short, so it had to be completely redone. This was a common theme throughout this whole thing, learning from your mistakes. Oh yeah, I did build a mock up frame just because I knew I would make a mistake with that, and I did. I accidentally set the saw at the wrong angle for one of the cuts, but the plan was to make mistakes with that. Back to the frame. I finally got the strip back in and did an even better job with it this time, so it all worked out the way ti was supposed to. 

      Pretty cool right. Ok, we are almost to the big reveal and that pleasant surprise that I was talking about. With the frame done I had to finally think about what was going in that center space. I went back to the whole kiss concept and kept it simple yet again. It also leaned hard on the freak factor, since this was essentially a hippy black light poster, and went with simple iris. You know the color part of your eye? I of course decided that I wanted it purple and had to try and mix the UV paint to get that color, all along hoping beyond hope that it wouldn't mess up the whole UV reactive part of the paint. I layed down the first color and hated it. It was way too maroon, so I focused on that little part of darker color around most peoples pupils. I got that a nice deep purple and just let it dry with my disappointment of that base color. No, I don't have a picture of that disaster. Now I had to not only worry about mixing messing up the reactive effect, but I now had to add in white which I was sure was going to destroy the desired effete, Oh, well, it didn't all  have to light up. I put in some time doing my normal painting techniques for most of this, but then threw in some more of that dry brushing, all the while having no real idea of how it would finally look, because I needed it pitch black and with the frame around it, but I couldn't bit it in the frame until it was done, so I only had a tiny UV flashlight to get an idea of how it would look. The other thing I had to think about was of course how it would look with the normal house lights on. It had to look both pleasing and unique under both conditions but there was only one that I really had control over and that is these next to pictures. First one is right after I finished and the second is it actually hangin in the frame.

     Not bad if I do say so myself, but that doesn't mean anything if no one else likes it. Now with that I have the final big reveal. Now I had to take several shots of this to get the right look. The first one I took was during the day so there was still some natural light slipping in, the second one I had a few house lights on that effected it, but then I finally got this shot which was with all the lights in the house off and just the frame lit up. Finally after all this writing I present to you Timothy Leary's Last Trip. Yeah, that's the name I gave it. 

 

     I somehow got it to do exactly what I wanted it to do, and the happy surprise was that the lights lined up as they did. I couldn't have planned that better if I tried, it was just a very happy accident. Remember I didn't put the painting in the frame until after it was completed, and considering I just eyeballed the placement of the tape when I masked it off, it makes it ever more surprising. Once again I must say that the photo doesn't really do it justice because there are places where it looks almost 3D with how the UV paint jumps off the black.

      This whole process was both frustrating and rewarding. Despite that frustration I had a wonderful time doing this, and when I was finally done, I was a little disappointed that I had nothing more to do, which is a good thing. I found that I really enjoy that whole splatter technique and really look forward to doing that again. I have more UV lights so maybe that whole black background with splatter and then another technique that I wanted to try but didn't on this one (stippling) but ended up not doing. I think those two together will be great of the type of paining. I might even splatter the frame to make it all cohesive. It's going to be fun. For the first time in a long time it felt like I accomplished something and that in itself is rewarding. The last, well 3 years for the most part have been incredibly difficult, and draining on my whole soul, so getting a creative idea and actually seeing it through was, well in a word, miraculous. This has planted the seed for more ideas, I'll just have to see what springs up in the future. In the meantime I have a new project that is just meant to take my mind off things and I might share that with you when I'm all done with it. This one isn't creative, but it should be fun.

      Needless to say, the painting is my Favorite Thing of the Week, so no song or video today. I had more I wanted to talk about but it can wait until next week since I've already taken up so much of your time, but I will say it was Pokemon related so you get a break this week. I will just say that I had a good week Pokemon wise with one hundo and 3 shinies just over the past 24 hours. Peace in and goodnight.