Pushing the Envelope

Can you tell I've been messing with the cover of the journal some more? What I've done is build up layers and layers of tar gel, drying under a heat lamp after each layer. A drying gun will wrinkle the gel - I guess it dries it too fast and the surface crawls and shrinks while the under layer is still wet.

Then after I got it all built up (scraping through to the black outlines before it was dry) I brushed satin gel over the skin areas. I make satin gel by mixing shiney and matte medium together. That way there is contrast between the surfaces. I also added a moon since the quotation referred to moonlight.

And I added powdered pigment as I built up the layers and color in her cheeks. If you paint between the layers as they are added you get a great effect of floating color similar to oil paint.

So gold pigment on the bathing suit and silver on the innertube. I can almost smell the black rubber as I write this - once as teenagers my friend Sondra and I floated all the way down a long river in Arizona that is famous for rafting (I'll think of the name later I'm sure - Verde? Salt River? hmmm). We each had a black innertube and at the end of the river we were far from our car but there were a bunch of Indian guys there that were really nice and drove us back to the headwaters where we were parked. I remember we sat in the bed of their clunky old pick up with our innertubes and we were both sunburned. Good times!! Okay, I'm outta here.