Archive for the ‘Painting’ Category
Now that summer has arrived, we look forward to all sorts of favorite activities - festivals, carnivals, fairs, parades, and many more festive events. More and more of these occasions are beginning to feature kids face painting as a popular activity. Kids love to have their faces painted, and it is fun for adults to see all the various designs.
A face can be transformed entirely into an animal or character, or even a monster. Or a portion of a child’s face can be painted – often with a simple design, such as a butterfly, a star, or whatever suits ones fancy. Facepainting just adds more fun to a great day!
A birdhouse or a nest box, as we all know, is an artificial house for birds to nest in. Many times they are built from wood. Other times they are made from various other materials. However, we are fully aware that these birdhouses are not just a place for birds. We use them to decorate and accentuate our walls, yards, gardens, and other parts of our homes. What great painting project it is to paint our own birdhouse.
So - if you want a great accent to your garden or other area, might I suggest a birdhouse? There are unfinished ones available at a very reasonable prices. They come in an assortment of styles and sizes and can be finished rather quickly and inexpensively.
So if you are a crafter who is interested in painting, make your next project a birdhouse.
Painting on terra cotta (clay) pots is another fun painting project. You can buy all sorts of beautiful flower pots in any style and with any design you desire, but a plain old clay pot painted by you is so much more desirable. And you can be sure that no one will ever have one exactly like it.
Go to any large home store or craft store and pick one up very inexpensively. Be sure to wash and dry it thoroughly. Next choose a design. You may want to lightly sketch it on the pot to be sure you have the right placement before you begin to paint.
In trying to suggest a variety of painting projects, I’ve looked around my own home to see what surfaces I have painted on in the past. I ran across some small terra cotta (clay) figures that I once painted. These little guys were and are very inexpensive to purchase, and no special talent is needed to paint them. Just follow the shape of the details, such as the face and hands, the hat, the coat, the shoes, the hair, and all the other little incidentals.
You can paint these little characters with just your basic colors: blue, red, green, yellow, while, beige. In fact, you actually can start with the three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) plus white and mix them together for any color you want.
Do you remember all the stores who carried unpainted plaster figurines and wall plaques a few years back? These were great painting projects. There was such an extensive variety of statuary in sizes from very small to very large. I loved to paint these items. In fact, I loved making them.
Weird as it may sound, I loved pouring plaster and making all these things. Maybe it was the fact that I could take a bag of plaster and in rather short time turn it into something beautiful. The tough part was handling the heavy molds.
At one time my husband and I had thousands of molds and made statuary for retail businesses. It seems as if those stores rarely exist any more, at least in our area. Yet you can still find an occasional piece, and most craft stores carry small unpainted plaster items to paint. It’s really quite fun.
At times I’ve found unpainted plaster items at a yard sale or thrift store. Keep your eyes open if you visit these places.
Bisque Figures Painted With Acrylic Paints
It is probably very seldom that it happens, but on a rare occasion we could find ourselves running out of painting projects, or maybe just looking for something new to paint. Perhaps we’re burned out on what we’ve been doing and need to find a new focus or project.
Do you like to have a lot of knick knacks sitting around? Do you find yourself at garage sales and flea markets buying all sorts of cute little things to sit around in your home? I have very little self-control when it comes to this. I love cute, decorative, and pretty things around my home.
What is even more fun is painting your own. Do you know that you can go to your local ceramic shop and buy all sorts of bisque figures? These have already been fired, and all you have to do is take them home and paint them with your acrylic paints. The great part is that you do not need to own a kiln or pay for these pieces to be fired. Just paint them as you normally would if you were painting a plaster piece.
If you’ve been painting for any time at all, you know who Priscilla Hauser is. Her face is a familiar one to acrylic painting artists. Known as the “First Lady of Decorative Painting,” Priscilla has taught her painting style extensively around the country, as well as around the world.
She has written quite a great number of books. One book of hers that is really innovative is “Priscilla Paints With Daubers.” Who would ever think that just by using various size of paint daubers you could create gorgeous pictures and designs? This is a book I would recommend for anyone looking for a simple way to get started in painting.
Isn’t painting fun? Thinking of painting makes me think of my childhood.
Nearly every summer when I was growing up, my father would load all of our family (my mother, my 2 brothers, and me) into our car, and we would travel way up North into Canada for our yearly vacation. It was a fun time!
My father was an avid fisherman so, of course, we rented a cabin on a fishing lake. It was not unusual for him to go out in his boat and sit and fish for hours, often without getting a bite. Many times I went along, fishing at times and trying to keep still so as not to scare the fish away. It was on these occasions that I would look around at the beautiful scenery and think ‘if only I could paint.’
Since then I have learned to paint, and even though I’m not the best painter – I certainly can’t hold a candle to many of you – it’s something I really enjoy, along with the other crafts and hobbies I enjoy.
If you are wanting to learn to be a decorative painter, you may want to try acrylic painting with Donna Dewberry. Her ‘One Stroke’ method of painting has changed many, many non-painters into artists, and in many cases it happened very quickly.
Donna came up with the One Stroke method while teaching herself to paint late at night while her family slept. Her persistence to learn has made her very popular in the decorative painting world. It is her claim that anyone who can draw a stick figure can learn to paint using her One Stroke technique.
Acrylic paints are the preferred medium of many artists. There are a variety of reasons for this. One of the advantages is the ease of clean-up. Being water-based, these paints and the brushes used with them can be cleaned with soap and water. (No smelly nor costly paint thinners needed!)
Acrylic paints have no odor, which is a great benefit to people who may be sensitive to strong odors. They come in a myriad of colors and shades, but if you cannot find exactly the right color, you can mix them as desired.
There are acrylic paints for nearly any and every surface. If you want to paint on fabric, you can get special paints for fabrics. If your surface is metal, there is a special paint for it. Do you paint on glass? Now you can buy an acrylic paint that lasts through several washings in the dishwasher. Whatever your project, more than likely you can find just the right acrylic paint for it.