Initial Sketch
Underpainting
Skull Finished Painting
I did a lot of research several tests before trying the techniques I tried here. And the painting seems to be stable for now, but I can’t guarantee anything, please do your own tests with your own materials and draw your own conclusions. Usually if there are problems it tends to happen within the first few days. As of now (two weeks), the painting is stable enough. The paint has not cracked or peeled (not even from purposely trying to peel it with tape), and the plastic (it’s HIPS plastic) is in great condition (the medium heat from the blow dryer did not bend it out of shape). Update: I did do a swab test (softly rubbing a wet cotton swab on the surface) at two weeks and I did get some very minor lifting in the background, but still nothing with the tape and nothing where I then painted the light in with gray over that red background. So I don’t think it’s something to worry about as long as I add an isolation layer of pure medium over everything. Whatever lose pigments remain from the under-bound paint look like they’re easily contained by another proper layer of paint. Overall it satisfies me. I’ll report back further once I add this layer.The only thing is I painted all the way to the edge and the paint is kind of ragged there, liable to being accidentally peeled from handling roughly. Before I didn’t paint to the edges because I used the edges to handle the canvas paper. I kept doing that for a while even though I started to secure my pages because they were already marked for it. But for this I thought there was no point, well now I realize it’s probably better to continue that habit.
Also all the water made the plastic stick to the paper I was using to hang it from. I managed to unstick it and rub it off with just some water, but some of the gesso came off. I repainted it, and it’s all fine. Not really the fault of the plastic (just the sheer amount of water would have ruined a painting in canvas paper), but more bad planning on my part.
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