Last night I created what I thought was a beautiful piece of art. I generally work with resin and translucent and opaque dyes, inks, crushed glass and seashells. Resin is a difficult medium as it has a short working time and tends to be very fluid and develop bubbles. You also need to use it in an environment with consistent temperatures (70-78 degrees is ideal) and lower humidity. I had an idea to create a wave on glass using white and different shades of one blue. I worked at it for about an hour and produced the following:
I was so happy.
Since resin needs several hours to cure, I checked on it again about an hour later to make sure that no bugs or pieces of dust had migrated into the resin.
It had morphed into this:
I was not as happy.
I learned that I need to wait for a while until I apply the white if I want to keep more defined lines in the resin. This is tricky, however, because although resin needs several hours to “cure”, the actual working time window is not so great. The more you fuss with it, the more bubbles you can make. And if you use a torch or heat gun to remove the bubbles, you can burn the resin. (By now, you’re asking yourself why I bother!!).
Once again, I learned that you have to fail to get it right. I’m a perfectionist, so this is not an easy lesson for me. But I enjoy making art so much that I am learning to let go of my need to be perfect.
I’ll be more patient next time and add the white a bit later after I put down the base color. The next one will be spectacular!