Star completed after one of those days...

So, I was travelling along nicely with this star piece I was doing for the bloke from Dad's church.

It took me three hours to get the lettering and design onto the star (previous post).  Then I began to fill it all in. Thanks to Barry for taking the shots of me at work.

Slowly and steadily we went along.  After another three hours the pieces was complete.  All the letters coloured in and tidied up. All the pencil lines removed.

Until disaster struck.

I thought that because it might need to be protected against the weather a bit, I should seal it with some fixative.  We took it outside and applied the fixative, and I think we overdid it and before we knew where we were, the whole darn thing was running!

Some very ugly letters...

Whole words almost wiped away.

The stress and despair was awful.  I tried a million ways to see if I could cover up the gold and re-do the letters, using things in the studio - metallic pencils; gold leaf; gold gouache; gold calligraphic stuff... and a resounding "NO" was the answer.

We went and bought a can of gold spray paint to see if I could somehow apply that and then re-work the lettering. Which in the end, was what I did.  Each and every letter had to be painted around again to create a straight outline (every single line had become furry and blurred, but not all as bad as those pictured above).

I got a container and sprayed the paint into it so it became liquid, then got a paintbrush and painted it on. This is the worst E repaired.

The overall results were satisfactory. This is the THE that had virtually disappeared.

And the star was delivered on time for the Christmas Light Show and Festival. Very. Very. Stressful.  The repair took a further 4 hours, so all up a 10 hour job.

Must be time to do something more relaxing!