Painting the Space Box for "Heavy Rescue 411: Ganymede Station" with Golden's Acrylic Paints, Gels and Pastes

Back here on the arts side again with an embed regarding how I plan to approach this project as sort of a tutorial. Surface is a 9x17 crate style gift box, plain wood. Came with packaged cheese, crackers, jams and other such mail-order Christmas fare. Painted Marx Toys space tank missing its dozer blade needed something bigger than my 4x4 inch Fun Size.

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Project had gotten stalled at this state with Marx tank descending crater to meet up with out of scale painted Marx astronaut from the same playset. Knew we could do better.

Much better.

Now it's an accident scene from one of those shows where guys in foil suits pull wrecked tractor trailers out of the snow. Only it's a spaceship and we're on Ganymede, where it snows frozen methane. My dad loves the shows and terrorizes anyone present with them daily. Plenty of material to work with here, respectfully. But yeah, this is therapy.

More laughs on a yammering post about the project from the Space Garage here.

Some nomenclature for the box's etymology. All the way from China! Better their trees, I guess ...

The bottom will get a basic treatment of crackle paste moon terrain then sealed over with enough gel medium to be sealed in safely for display on tables or shelves. Though usually I approach the artworks anticipating it will hang on a wall and it seemed kind of weak to just leave the base plain.

I try to think of the box form as nine small panels intersecting at 90 degree angles. Each one should be its own interesting little painting, and all nine should work together no matter what angle they are seen from. When you first approach artwork in person it is rarely face on, and seldom from the Dutch Angle views I use for standalone pix. So it has to at least look intriguing from all sides, if not damn good for something that small.

My standard 4x4 and 5x7 inch sizes. Seemed kind of lame to have the sides just bare or even painted black, so I started letting the insides creep out. Now as much time goes into crafting the sides & bottom as do the main interior panels.

Goal for the sky on what I call The Forgotten Box with color shifts in a whispy haze of Light Interfere Fluid Acrylics. Then glassed over with multiple coats of Clear Tar Gel dried to a visible depth, with the shimmering Micaceous Iron Oxide Fluid Acrylic optically magnified by the curves in the dried gel layer.

So, working this motif sort of backwards: Usually I paint the box and then choose the found pieces to tell some sort of absurd little story. In this case it's starting with the story and a barely begun box, then crafting both to complement the other. The idea will change and evolve, spawning others. There are plenty of broken spaceships to go around ...

GOTCHA

Camera crew ready for more emotive interviews back at the Space Garage.