Trial by Fire
Originally uploaded by lessherger

In this image I'm working on 140lb Stonehenge fawn colored paper. It's very absorbent and nice for a lot of acrylic work. It's very sturdy. I sealed the page with gesso.

After I sealed the page and it had fully dried I lightly sanded it smooth with an extra fine sanding block. I then used a stencil of flames and layered it over itself several times to get the flames. I used yellow, orange and red to give the flames some shape and interest. After I had stenciled that I dried the image with my heat gun. After that was fully dry I mixed some blue paint with gloss gell medium and mixed it well on my palette. Using a coarse brush I put in several layers of the blue around the fireball. I left a lot of brush strokes visible purposefully. Brush strokes add a little more interest to the image.

After the blue dried fully I mixed some burnt sienna with some glaze medium and brushed that around the fire ball to darken the edges. I used a soft rag to blend the paint into the edges of the fire ball.

After that was dry I was considering the image of the fire. It was off somehow.So I decided to add some black outline to it. Using an Elmer's paint pen, in extra fine black I quickly doodled in some flame detail.

After everything had dried I added the lettering in white Elmer's paint pen with a calligraphy tip.