The Agony of Drying Paint

Well this is it! Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's portrait is finished...well mostly. I still have to let the oil paint dry, which can take up to a week! I put it and the flowers under a heat lamp to hopefully speed up the process; hoping that it will be dry enough to take to the gallery tomorrow. After they all dry, the flowers have to be pasted to boards and everything needs to get a nice protective clear coat put over them so they will last.

Unfortunately, I wont be putting up a picture of the finished portrait until after the show. It just looks so much better in real life, and I dont want to take away that element by showing you now. It would be like telling you how an intense movie ends... So instead Ill give you a little spy shot and a few other steps of things I worked on yesterday.

Only eight more days until the show!

This is what I CAN show you of the portrait



Here is the first step in redoing the flower in the portrait. I had to wipe off the oil paint first so I didnt smear it when I pasted the page over it.



Covered up the old flower



Now I start inking in the new, bigger flower



Add a little paint



And let them all dry