Fun with paint

Today, I added the stars to the inside of the closet box. It looked kind of flat with them all being white and on top of the other paint, so I added a bit more of the dark paint and then flicked shiny blue, teal, reddish, and then dark purple over top. The result is pretty good. I think that I should have used more texture paste on the inside, since there are quite a few cardboard ripples and paper edges. I also should have gone for more of a blue background instead of adding in any black (maybe dig up one of the super small tubes of a very dark blue and see if I can find a way to get something similar with one of the blues I have in larger quantities plus something else. I think that burnt umber is often added). Tomorrow, I'm super busy, but I've added an item on my to do list for Sunday to write down what I did and what I learned with painting this starscape. One of the things I've learned is that I just love flicking paint at things. I think I'll make the hutch into something like sandstone (or something else with a sandy color) that I can flick a lot of paint at. Fun!

I'm also pretty close to the end of folding paper for the dragon scales for the back of one of the bookshelves on the hutch, so I painted all the scales that are already done with a couple of coats of white (while chatting with my mom), so that they look nice and even (they are made from paperwork, so the inside has printing all over it, which you can kind of see on the outside). Now that I know that I'm going to make a sandy-colored hutch, I've decided that I'll go with watered down shiny pink and gold for the scales (like just a wash rather than a thick layer of paint).

Speaking of thick layers of paint, I've had trouble getting my layers thin enough on the outside of the closet box. I tried to thin out the paint with acrylic medium, but it still ended up really thick. I suppose I could try scraping some of it off, but this "not watery enough" issue has some up many times for me. I got some acrylic pouring medium (there is a technique where you mix acrylic paint with this stuff and then pour it over something, and it eventually solidifies to make a pretty mix of colors, I guess). I'm going to see if I use the pouring medium as a thinner if that will help. I want it to be _really_ thin.

One of the reasons that I want to get it very thin is stickiness. I read another article today on why the paint stays sticky. An interesting bit in there was that while the top layer of acrylic paint dries quickly, it can take quite a while - even weeks - for the paint to really dry on the inside. The thicker the layer, the longer it takes. Now that I know, I can give my stuff more time to dry before I start using it (and before I put varnish on it). But also, if I can get those layers thinner, it will help a lot too.

Oh, and I'll take photos for you guys soon.