Sometimes things just blow up in your face.

I painted this as a gift for someone, because he loves wolfies.

I wanted to make kind of an oplalescent underpainting for the light streak to go on top of, so on some parts of the piece, I used lemon yellow first, and a bright pink watered down a bit over that, then a cyan blue.

Then I painted the light streaks in blue, light blue, cyan and white.

After I finished it, I photographed it, thinking I’d send it to another friend to see is she’d like one.

I let it sit about a week so it would be very dry by the time I mailed it. But … major problems!

Within 2 days of finishing it, that pink started to bleed out to the top. By the end of a week, it was glaring through like a damn neon sign. You can kinda see it in this shot, which was taken right after finishing it.

I tried painting over it, and varnishing it and then painting it over, and other various means – but -sadly, that pink just wouldn’t give up. It completely dominated the whole thing.
Can we spell burn-that-sucker?

I asked my landlord to put it in her burn pile, and we sat there and watched the art board shimmer and shiver and the wolf writhe and wriggle as the whole thing went up in smoke.

And no, we didn’t breathe the fumes!

It was a 30″ x 40″ painting, so it felt like a huge loss. I was really sorry to see it go – but guess what I will never do again!!!!