Is a painting ever "done?"

This is a demo I did in an Extreme Abstracts class. Working quickly in a class, I often don't have time to fully analyze my demo paintings because I'm busy analyzing the students' work.

This one was not a painting I was wild about. It had the basic design elements I wanted to demonstrate, but it didn't have any pizazz or a refined color palette. It sat around in my studio for quite a while. Yesterday I picked it up and started messing around with it.

"Sushi Den" by Carol Nelson

The revised version is much more appealing to me. I stenciled on a pattern of dots using molding paste over some of the black areas.

The stencil I used was the drywall tape with holes in it found in the drywall section at Home Depot. After drying, I painted the dots shades of green. I also painted a wash of green over the patterned paper near the bottom.

I added more gold metallic paste (DecoArt's Metallic Luster) to the clay medallion.

I also toned down the red areas which were too vibrant.  What you can't see in the photo is the top red horizontal band which is actually metallic and shiny.  The camera has trouble showing metallic shine.

For more information about this painting, click here to go to my website.