This is a little late because I was procuring a camera that could actually pick up the glow paints in the dark, but I’m happy I waited because these photos are better than what I could get on my phone.
Overall, I think this project turned out fairly well. I came quite close to achieving the effect that I wanted, and it was a really interesting experience working with glow pigments. The project isn’t as neat and the teddy bear isn’t as well hidden in the light as I would have liked, but I think that if I continue to make paintings with the glowing pigments, I would get better at hiding where the glow pigments. It took me a while to really get the hang of the medium, and at that point I was already committed to a painting concept and a project that didn’t necessarily fit the colours as well as it could have.
I am happy that the teddy bear is identifiable as a teddy bear in the dark, which was something that was a concern for a while. I also would like it if the glow paints were a bit brighter, but in general I am happy with how much they lit up after being exposed to good sunlight.
I’m looking forward to trying this kind of a project again sometime in the future — neater and better planned. One of my biggest mistakes was not realizing that I wasn’t capable to reproducing the flourescent orange colour of the glow pigment using my gouche paint, so it doesn’t blend into the spider’s face very well in the light. It blended better when it was all gouche paint, but after adding on thick layers of the glow paint to make it show up in the dark, it looked decidedly different. The colors in the gouche paint do not lend themselves to flourescent tones, so I would need to find another way to achieve that color using plain paint if I were to attempt something like this again.
Nevertheless, I like the way I was able to use ‘painted’ light and create two different pictures in different light, so I consider this project relatively successful.