I caved.

There’s a new member in our family and her name is Sugar Bear.  She’s a long-haired hamster who is totally cute and has a glint in her eye suggesting she’s already mapped out all possible escape routes.  My daughter has been lobbying strenuously for the last two years for a dog.  She briefly considered a hamster earlier; but then I reminded her of our three high maintenance cats, all of which are proven mousers.  Just a couple of weeks ago she started talking about wanting a chinchilla.  I knew I was in for several months to a year of talking chinchilla at every possible moment if I didn’t do something quickly.  So I weighed the pros and cons of the aforementioned possible pets and ran to the nearest pet store for a hamster.

After all that family excitement…

…I decided to put an alizarin crimson wash on Big Bertha while I wait impatiently for the matte medium.  (Real story:  I ran out of time today and a wash is super easy to do.)  I might put a second wash over just parts of it tomorrow to get darker colors and more depth.  I’m also toying with the idea of some kind of sparkly addition.  I have a thing for sparkles.  Who knows, by the time I finish with my tinkering, I might not need the matte medium!

There were some interesting textures that popped out due to take up of the wash on layered tissue areas.  On the other hand, the wash pooled on the gold and silver, metallic, tissue papers.  After putting the wash over the whole canvas, I went back and “erased” it off the metallic papers with some paper towels.  It made those shiny areas pop forward more and was a nice effect.  I then took the paper towels and dabbed them over the plain canvas areas so it became less uniform.  My favorite effect though was in the areas where the cream tissue paper was put on the canvas with gesso.  Areas that had been crumpled and not glued down took on the alizarin crimson, those with the gesso not so much.  Here’s the closeup so you can see.

I’ll probably have to do a whole painting starting just with that.  Very cool.

(Okay, so maybe I didn’t really cave.  Maybe I just made a little girl very happy.  We little girls all need some happiness.)