Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 77719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Frowning, I looked at the bowl, trying to see what she was. “No, it looks like an aged effect, but not cracked asphalt. Was that what you were going for?”
Wrinkling her nose, she shook her head. “Nah, it just felt like I was looking at a patch of the road leading to my grandparents’ place at the back of their property. It never got used much, so it was like being on a fairground ride when I drove over it. I preferred it to approaching from the main one at the front, though, so I had to grit my teeth every time I took the car up it.”
I swear it felt my brows almost met at the description. “How’s that applicable to this? Did you drive over it to get a cracked effect on your work?”
“No,” she chuckled. “All I can picture is how the road looks when I see the finish on this. I might give it a coat of a glaze with some minute metallic particles in it. That makes the metallic chrome paint look shinier. I can always finish it with a Ceramic Epoxy layer. I just don’t like doing that because it’s so time-consuming and the stuff stinks.”
“What does an epoxy layer look like?”
Turning to a shelf behind her, she pointed at a tall vase. “This is how it all looks when the whole process is over. It’s beautiful but fiddly because, once you pour the epoxy on it, you’ve got to attach it to this machine that rotates it so it dries evenly.”
I knew what she was saying and that the plate/bowl might be hard to do, but I loved the idea of that kind of finish on it.
Seeing where my mind was going, she smirked. “Fine, we’ll do it on the plate thingy. I’ve got a book on how to apply epoxy to different projects, so I’ll check in there. So far, there’s nothing they haven’t been able to explain.”
Sitting back down in my chair, I waited for her to move the piece she’d been working on to the side and come back. Unrolling the drawing in front of her once she was settled, I held my breath while she looked at it.
Here’s one of the biggest differences between being a tattoo artist and an artist—a tattoo was a piece of art, chosen by someone to have inked onto their body forever. A big similarity between the two jobs, was that you had a moment where you braced for them to either say you’d done a shitty job or to tell you they loved it. Granted, art was easier to fix than a tattoo, but still.
“This is gorgeous,” she murmured, sweeping her fingers over the paper. “I love it.”
“Do you think it needs anything?”
Tilting her head to the side, she tapped the bottom of the paper. “What about the gas tank from one of the bikes here. The flames could be spread across it with the eagle and phoenix still coming out of them, or they can come out of the top of it like it’s on fire.”
I could see it clearly the second she described it.
“I want that,” I said immediately, reaching for a pencil from the pot she now kept on the bench while we worked on our oversized vase. “If I do it like this,” I outlined a gas tank around it, planning it so that the flames and birds spread across it, “and then keep it so that the flames shape it, without there being a harsh outline.” Sitting back, I grinned at how it looked. “What do you think?”
“I love it,” she murmured, tracing around the outline of the gas tank with the tip of her index finger. “I’ve got almost every color of paint in a metallic finish, so you could even have it painted a metallic black on the areas the flames don’t cover.”
“What about the background around the gas tank, though?”
For once, I was drawing a blank on something, and all that did was scream to me how important she was. I usually made decisions on the fly, confident with my choices. If it was related to the club, we all made them. If it was a business one, I had Blaze’s opinions and ideas, too. But for this, I wanted it to be an us project, and her thoughts and decisions would add to its beauty.
“I think white would be too harsh, cream would dull down its masculinity and clash,” she mused, glancing over at the shelves where her paints were.
“Okay, here’s an idea. What about if we paint it black, then apply a dark gray, metallic crackling paint, to make it look like the asphalt I was talking about? The particles in the Ceramic Epoxy will make them stand out and look like it’s really cracked over the black background.”