A stupidly annoying amount of work and time went into this rather simple image.
Intended Procedure:
- Spray background
- Trace projected pencil lines
- Paint lettering and moose
Actual way things went:
- Spray background
- Trace projected pencil lines
- Paint moose
- Paint embarrassingly hideous approximation of lettering
- Make heroic effort to rescue lettering by painting orange around edges of letters
- Give up and have DeeDee paint white over lettering down to tape above moose
- Have DeeDee feather edges of white after realizing tape edge will be glaringly visible through spray-paint
- Spray half a gallon of frustratingly transparent orange over white
- Cut stencil for lettering
- Spray letters through stencil
- Make heroic effort to rescue lettering overspray by painting orange around edges
- Mix orange with white and spray entire canvas, making little effort to avoid moose
- Spray another half gallon of orange
- DeeDee graphites the back of a print-out of the lettering and transfers the pencil lines to the canvas
- DeeDee paints the lettering and repaints the moose
- I sign the image, hang it up for a photo, fervently vowing never to paint lettering again.
Graphiting:
Using a bar of graphite (pencil lead) on the back of an image allows you to create something like carbon-paper. This carbon can then be taped to another surface. Going over the lines on the front with a pen or pencil or nib, will transfer the pencil lines to the surface.