Black felt wall makes good GID astro art background

[Redhat]

Hey,

Redhat here with a neat way to design and test GID astro art.

Start with a blank "wall" of black felt.

Then on other pieces of black felt, create the astronomical images using GID technology. You can:

- glue white paper circles prepainted with GID paint for planets/stars

- spray paint fluorescent nebulae using red (its orange under UV) and blue spray paint (hardware store and hobby store types work OK)

- spray clear urethane on the felt and dust with various GID powders (both fluo. and phos. for different effects)

- press GID powders and sand directly into the felt. It stays put fairly well

- create a "galaxy stamp" out of wood or hard rubber and stamp a spiral pattern of glue, GID solvent or GID paint and spinkle the wet felt with GID powder.

- attach other objects over the GID paint and powder to create dark nebula. Copper wire works well. You can blacken parts of it with a candle flame for more effect.

- use a combination of a high quality GID pigment (like from Glow Inc.) with a lower quality paint like Scribbles 3D fabric paint. Source. This stuff is in a rubbery matrix so it can be "sculpted" which provides interesting shadows under UV. Alone or sprinkled with quality GID powder provides some cool effects since the fabric paint's glow doesn't last very long. The spinkled GID powder is a good way to create the "H2" regions of a galaxy

- let your imagination loose.....


Then you can attach the felt art pieces to the felt wall by simply pressing them on (like we all did in grade school). Under UV, you can't see the separation of the felt pieces and the wall so it looks pretty real.

You can tweak your design and try new things before committing to anything (if you indeed want to) and gluing the pieces to the wall.



RH

[Redhat]

If you put the felt wall on a cork board (or a foam-core insulation board like R-Max), you can add stars using GID painted map tacks.


RH

[Redhat]

Hey,

Redhat here with another attempt at photographing the experiments I'm doing for my space room.

These are some astro images (roughly based on the actual thing) I did on felt that will go up on the felt wall (once its built).

They look much cooler in person but the pix give a general idea.

More trix for felt art pieces:

- You can mash the Scribbles fabic paint into the felt and mix colors. Just add GID powder on top. I apply it with my fingers and a pair of tweezers.

- Go with the purple ... Instead of blocking it with absorbant felt, try using something reflective to use that color. I used a piece of aluminimum foil in part of a dark nebula (in the Rosette trio, its the one on the right).

- Use the Scribbles 3D fabric paint for stars. The paint comes in little squeeze bottles with a tiny tip. With a little practice you can get almost spherical blobs to come out and stick to the felt. Any size "star" is possible and (though I only used green here) the glow fabric paint comes in 4 colors.

- Use flat black spray painted paper glued to the felt for a higher resolution image. The felt makes things kind of fuzzy.

- Speaking of which, you can increase the fuzziness with a piece of tape (pulling some of the fibers up) and on the tips of the fibers, put fabric paint "star" drops. They pop out very "3-Dimensionally".

- You can dim down too bright areas by grinding a little charcoal pencil over the area and sealing with clear urethane.

- Plenty more to come in future posts....


RH

[Redhat]

Hey,

Redhat here with another hardware store based GID astro art creation that now hangs on the black felt wall in my star room.

I used some black nylon door screen (50 cents/foot) as a background for a nebula.

Paints used: Hardware store fluor. spray paint (green, red, blue and yellow), GID sand and powders (blue, ultra green, purple, white and red) glued on with Elmers spray-on glue, and 3D Scribbles Fabric Paint "stars". Also glued on was a black felt "dark nebula". Finally, stuck into the RMAX foamboard (behind the wall's black felt), some map tack stars.

You can make 'huge' mural nebulae and galaxies with this screen since it comes in large sizes and is light weight.

RH