Garden Art Experiment-Part 8

We had snow on Monday, but fortunately it was only about five inches.  Compared to the ten inches they were predicting, we got off lightly.  Low temperatures have kept the snow on the ground though.  It will warm up into the upper thirties today, so maybe we will have some melting.

I started painting the leaves on my painted gazing ball.  I quickly found out that my plan of painting another layer of leaves over top of the leaves already painted was not going to work well.  What works well in nature does not always work in a painting.  It looked like an over crowded mess.  So I am now in the process of painting highlights on leaves that are already painted onto the ball.  It looks much better that way.  I am about two-thirds of the way through the painting. 

I was planning on giving the finished ball a coat of spar varnish once the painting was complete.  However, there is none left in the workshop.  I'll be using some other type of exterior polyurethane.  It depends on what I find in the workshop that has been left over from other projects.  I can't say for certain exactly what is down there at the moment.  Whatever I have is what I plan to use.  I'm trying to clear out some of the old material that is taking up shelf space down there.
 
I figure that I have another day's worth of painting to do on the ball.  Since I haven't finished yet, the photo was taken on my work table.  Sorry for the mess in the background.  At the moment, the ball is resting on a tin can.  I still have to paint a stand for it.  If you have an interest in how I make a gazing ball stand, view my posts about it from early 2012.  I won't go into the process in this post.

This project has taken me on an interesting journey.  I figured out a way of making a mold and forming a concrete ball.  Then I embarked on a journey of learning how to paint flowers.  I could spend some more time on the leaves to make them more realistic, but I am not sure that is actually necessary for this project.   Once the ball is place outside, most people will be viewing it from such a distance that the detail won't be visible.

Over time, I have come to appreciate the process of painting.  When I first started crafting, I had a plenty of projects that went unfinished because I did not really understand that the intermediate stages of the process could be so discouraging.  I hope to encourage people to stick with their projects and to go back and complete an unfinished project.   If you keep working at it, you will learn how to see what needs to be done to bring the project to a successful close, even though it may not be exactly as you wanted it to be.

I have also found that having a vision of what you want the project to be is helpful in keeping me on track.  That said, I have also found that it helps to be flexible in that vision.  Sometimes you have to allow the piece to become what it needs to become.