It is nearly done! I stopped last night around 12:45 (this was my third night in a row of staying up past 1:00 a.m., and I'm starting to feel it). There is one small area that needs a tiny bit of detail work. After it spends the day drying, I should be able to polish that off in about ten minutes.
However, I made the mistake of bringing it in to work with me today. That means I'll be spending the day looking at it, finding more things to do. I already spotted one thing I could correct. It's not something super obvious, I think, but it's hard to tell. After spending so much time staring at it, it becomes very difficult to tell what works and what doesn't, which mistakes are glaring to a casual observer and which are merely wickedly haunting my second-guessing right hemisphere.
I think it looks really good, though. I'm pleased with it. I even signed and dated it last night.
Figuring out how much time I've spent on it is very hard. I kept thinking, "I'm probably getting close to fifty hours," but I started thinking that twenty hours ago, at least. Fifty hours would be a very conservative estimate. I don't think I hit a hundred. Seventy hours worth of work is probably about right but really I just don't know.
Photos will follow in a few days.
I should also add that rubbing a cut garlic clove onto the surface of a painting does, in fact, seem to curtail the beading problem I was having. Now the painting smells like garlic. I'm sure it will fade before too long; but in the meantime, Lynette, if you're reading this, and you're not a garlic person, then…sorry.
I'm willing to bet there are no mistakes obvious to the casual observer.
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