Painted Items and Some Painting Tips

Sticky snow! That’s what my sister called the snow we had last night which is a pretty good description of it but not one that most people use to describe snow. She said she really had to scrape hard to get the snow off the windshield this morning because it was wet snow that then froze. It was wet snow here today too and much harder to shovel than last week. Now it’s going to be freezing cold for four days before warming up to 0ºC (32F) next Monday. I’m so sick of winter!
 

I had another question about painting on wood which was good timing because I just finished a piece so I have an example to show you. Before I start painting on wood I give it a very light coat of Varathane which is a sealer and finisher. If you don’t put that coat of sealer on, the paint will just absorb into the wood. Now, sometimes you want that look – it’s called ‘pickling”. Here is an example of pickling.

This is my wooden Halloween candy jar that I painted several years ago. This is the pen and wash technique. The wood background was just slightly painted with tinted Varathane. Then the drawings were added and outlined with a waterproof pen and then the paint was added as a wash – which is just watered down paint. It gives a very pastel look. It was fun to do. Here are the other sides of the container. The wooden stem is the handle of the top that lifts off.

 

Now, when you want to have total coverage of the wood, then you seal it first. Then put a very thin layer of paint on each part – blocking it in. For example, here is the birdhouse Joe’s cousin made and asked me to paint for him. He wants to make several of these to sell at the church’s auction sale this fall and wondered how they would look painted.

Excuse the fuzzy photos – bad lighting. So, the main part of the birdhouse was given a thin layer of the dark brown wood; the roof and door (on the other side) the raw sienna colour; the sign on the door and windows a very light blue (one other big window on the other side) and the posts light brown. Once they were dry then I went back over them with more layers of thicker paint until I was happy with the coverage.

The windows and door was outlined in the same light brown as the posts. The windows have curtains. Here’s a close-up

Once the light blue was dry, I made a wash (watered down white paint) and painted in the curtains from the middle to the inside….several brush strokes which do not show up well here but in real life it looks like creases in the curtains from being pulled back. The sign on the door says, “gone fishing”.

Here are some other angles.

 

 It is straight - my camera was on an angle.

So, hope this helps out anyone who wants to do some acrylic painting. There is no shading or high-lighting on the birdhouse but that's another method that takes practice.

That’s all for a cold Wednesday in February

 

Cheers

Violet