"To add to the unique character of his paintings, and to give them the very personal touch of a man fortunate to have walked on the Moon, he cuts small pieces from the U.S. flag (No. 2 in the photo above) and the NASA and Apollo 12 mission patches and his name tag that were sewn on his EVA space suit and fixes them on the textured surface using a thin acrylic medium. Because Bean and Conrad spent more than seven hours outside the lunar module and got their suits very dirty as they worked, each of the fragments is impregnated with small amounts of lunar dust. As a final touch, Bean adds small pieces from the gold Kapton foil that insulated the command module Yankee Clipper's hatch leading to the lunar module Intrepid (No. 3 in the photo above). He also adds charred particles (No. 4 in the photo above) from Yankee Clipper's heat shield.

"Thus the base layer of all of his paintings contain small pieces of his space suit and the command module and also very small amounts of Moon dust."