Finished Welcome Sign- Plus extra tips!

The Welcome Sign project is finally finished, and it's great to see the piece in its complete form. It makes a nice, rustic entrance decoration for almost any home, and is just fun to make in and of itself. :)

As you can see, I added a twine flower and border to the piece, and glued the driftwood down. 

Any hot-glue or super-glue works; I used both. 

If you want to use a water-proofing agent to coat the piece, it's important to follow the directions on the can. You may choose not to water-proof it, since the stuff can be highly flammable; but, if you do, I'd recommend a heavy-duty version, like the kind used on shoes. You'll want to spray 2-3 even layers, going in rows, across the piece to give it a good coat. The purpose of this is to prevent the chipping of the acrylic paint with weather/age, so spraying the twine and found objects really isn't necessary. 

Enjoy!

Welcome Sign Continued...Almost Done!

As the title indicates, our welcome sign is almost complete. I've painted on the daisies and blue-sky pattern letters, and it has an over-all welcoming outdoor feel. After painting the surface, I also chose earthy colors to cover the sides with, although you can't see those in the picture. I would choose colors that compliment the overall composition, but some nice earth-tones for outdoor artwork are muted greens, reddish browns, and dark golds. I would follow the same general rule for painting the back, which may or may not be visible depending on the owner's choice of display.

After painting the surfaces, it's time to place your found objects and play around with a composition that is aesthetically pleasing. I still intend to add twine and other stones to this piece, but here's what I have so far:

The two pieces of drift-wood on either side, and the stone at the bottom-right, all help give the piece balance and an earthy feel. This is important criteria to consider whenever you're arranging a piece of artwork: go with your gut, and if something feels/looks off, it probably is. 

I decided to use a strong super-glue to attach my found objects, and am debating between glue or nails for attaching the twine. Nails would look more rustic, but it's also important to be cautious and not damage the work. If anyone has suggestions, let me know! The piece should be finished in the next post. :)

Follow-Up on Welcome Sign

The next step in crafting a Welcome sign is coating the board in gesso. I start in one direction, such as portrait orientation, and brush a single layer on. Then, after it dries, I brush on a second layer in the opposite direction (landscape.) While the layers of gesso are drying, I dab the edges of the board, which are more spongy in texture, to fill in the craters. Once dry, you can flip the board over and cover the back in the same manner as the front. (I'd recommend doing the whole process over several layers of newspaper.) 

(Also, my brush had fresh gesso in it when I took this photo. I would not recommend letting it dry with the paint in it, or forgetting about it, during the process.)

I actually changed my Welcome-sign design since last post. Someone pointed out to me that "Welcome to my home" carries the connotation that the owner of the piece is single or lives alone, and changing the phrase to "our home" would have just the opposite connotation. To make the sign more versatile, I changed the phrase to "Welcome to this home."

Also, though still rustic, I decided to replace the chicken and tree with daisies (which only have stems right now), and to fill the font in with a sky-blue, cloud pattern. Most of what you see in the painting below are just base layers, meaning that I haven't gotten any of the details in yet, and the design is still a little rough; but the concept is present in that the warm colors help establish the mood of a welcoming, warm home. Here's what I've got so far:

This upcoming week I'll be cleaning up the edges, adding daisies, clouds, and maybe even butterflies, and also looking for found objects. My hope is to have some smooth stones and twigs to paste onto the surface, and twine to either crochet or line around the edges. If anyone has any questions about the painting process, (I'm using acrylic,) feel free to ask! Until then, have a great week. :)

The Welcoming Committee

Yesterday, while I was speaking to one of my mother's friends about a commissioned piece of artwork, the idea popped into my head of designing a piece that would not only be a fun project, but also compliment someone's home. After all, whenever people buy artwork for a home or business, they consider how it enhances the space. 

Growing up in the Midwest, I've seen a lot of cute welcoming mats in front of doors, a lot of decorative key-stones and garden-gnomes, and LOTS of signs that say phrases like, "Welcome to our home!" or "Mi casa es tu casa." I wanted to make a piece of art that would act as a welcoming committee for a house, that would combine found objects and natural materials to make the project meaningful and fun. 

Another part of the inspiration was the fact that I had three slabs of fine-grain, heavy-weight particle board that I thought of gesso-ing over and making paintings with. It soon occurred to me that even though they would make great "canvases," they were far too heavy to place hanging fixtures in, as they would tear the wall, or be torn themselves. So, I decided the boards will make a great sitting decoration, something that can lean against a brick wall on someone's porch. 

After coating the board with a layer of gesso, I plan on painting some background images (with acrylic paint) of flowers, trees, and a chicken—your basic rustic scenery. Then, in the foreground, will be the words, "Welcome to my home" in stylistic format. Once the painting layer is finished, I plan on applying bits of sea glass, stones, flattened leaves and flowers, twine, etc. onto the surface using molding paste or some other adhesive. After the colors and shapes are all in, the board can be sealed with matte medium or a water-proofer, since it will be outside. 

Here's a very basic sketch for the background-painting:

Hopefully it will be cute! This is a slightly long-term project in that it can't be done in a typical afternoon, so I'll be posting every few days to once a week on the step-by-step process as I complete it myself. Keep your eyes peeled!

Different Way of Using Oil Pastel

So, when getting a fundamental art education, they always say, "don't break the rules." I think it's very important to know the rules, for sure, because without them artistic techniques and proper use of media wouldn't exist. Nevertheless, great art wouldn't exist without breaking some of the rules---impressionism, modern art, abstract art, and other styles would never have come into being without some rule-breaking.

Now, I don't consider myself a "great" artist---I haven't lived long enough---but I have experimented with a little bit of tradition-breaking in certain media. Today I'll be talking about techniques I tried out with oil pastel, since it can be a frustrating medium to use at times.

The problem I encountered with oil pastel was the simple nature of it. It's sticky. It doesn't blend well. It doesn't build opaque layers on itself easily, and if you try to blend colors, you end up rubbing the oil pastel stick hopelessly on the other color, without any of it getting on the paper. Consequently, a lot of oil pastel pieces look streaky or patchy like this:

(I do not own this piece or the rights to it.)

There's nothing wrong with this patchy style, and I like this flower-piece, but I wanted my work to have a smoother feel to it. My oil pastel, called "Out of the Darkness," I completed using my fingers as the principle tool of pastel-application. Since your fingers have natural oils in them, they actually work really well for blending and smearing, where the sticks themselves can fall short.

Out of the Darkness

Where you see the sky turning black, I got that sense of translucency by rubbing the oil pastel across with my index finger. On the grass, I applied several parallel curved lines about the same shape as the hills, and vertically dragged my finger down the lines from one end to the other, causing that rippling, billowing effect. Later I came in with straight white lines to give the scene a glowing appearance.

Where I didn't break the rules was in the water; it appears to have purple reflections, but that was actually pink pastel I was applying on top of the blue. As you can see, it didn't come off very well. The only reason I didn't try to make it more pink was that I felt the cool purple would better fit the color scheme.

Hope my "discoveries" benefit all you artists out there! If anyone would like to purchase this piece, they can contact me via my profile.

Fun Summer Art Project

In the past couple of years, my observation has been that more artists are producing pieces using recycled or found objects. Either they do it out of environmental concern, the desire to be frugally creative, or to simply impress the world with the art they can create out of every-day things that surround them. For me, all three motives tie into my recycled artwork, alongside my desire to use my craft skills in a non-conventional way.

Today I'll be focusing on hanging wall-art. Although most of us don't think about it, almost every frame has a sheet of cardboard in the back, pressing the contained piece to the glass. This is usually hidden from human eyes, and the old saying, "out of sight, out of mind" holds true. Sure, we could condemn cardboard as tacky, but I began to see hanging cardboard as an overlooked idea. Why not make artwork out of the frame?

       Some basic materials for this project include:
       -Smooth, undamaged cardboard
       -Old yarn, string, lace, fabric
 -Scraps of craft paper, plastic, old notebook covers, etc.
 -Tea wrappers & sterile food packaging                                            
 -Elmer's glue & hot glue
 -Scissors
 -Needle & thread, if needed
 -Butcher Paper
 -Acrylic paint & brushes


This kind of project is fairly open-ended, but one thing is sure: you'll want to try to form a balanced composition out of the objects you find. I spent the first few minutes of each project rearranging scraps over the work surface, cutting them, reshaping them, until I was satisfied.
Second, it's important to establish a slightly more professional quality to your piece, especially considering that it's made out of "trash." One way of giving it a clean edge--literally--is to cut the butcher paper into 1-inch strips and glue it around the sides of the cardboard to hide the corrugation. To avoid a wrinkly gluing job, I would recommend using a paintbrush to apply the glue and smooth it over. (Just remember not to let the brush dry with the glue in it! :) ) Once dry, the butcher paper blends in with the cardboard and you're left with a clean, smooth plane.

From here on out it's up to you to glue down the recycled elements carefully (and if you're using hot glue, quickly) and make sure everything is attached securely. If you're going to use acrylic as part of your composition, I would apply it early on in the layering process, unless you want it to overlap fabrics and papers.You can also sew, knit, knot-tie, weave, or do any other method of embellishing, if you want.

Lastly, it's important to fix your artwork to hang on a wall. Since this was a recycled-art project, I used a soda-can tab and gorilla glue as a fixture on the back. The glue takes about 2 hours to dry, so it's not a bad idea to check on the tab and make sure it's level during the process. Once it's ready, you can hang it on a nail in the wall!

Update on Painted Shoes

As promised, I've posted some pictures on how the painted shoes are holding up. The color is still bright and vibrant, most likely since I coated the acrylic with water-proofer, but there is some evidence of wearing. Where the natural creases form in shoes from walking, the paint acquires faint cracks and the fabric develops creases. Some people enjoy an aged look to their shoes, but if you're not one of them, you can always touch up the areas of trouble with a small amount of paint, and just re-proof the region. The only issue with that method is that you're left constantly revising the paint job, so I'd recommend it for painted shoes with a design that's difficult to replicate, or shoes that have some sort of sentimental value.

The Community Mural

The Fine Arts Academy ended on Saturday, and each of us artists dispersed in different directions toward our homes. We weren't left without a memory of the artistic community we had there, however, since the community mural was finished. I enjoyed the process of painting it, especially being able to collaborate with other artists, even if they didn't consider themselves painters. The 6 larger bubbles representing each artistic discipline from left to right are: creative writing, instrumental music, theater, dance, visual art, and vocal music. The large orange one has the Missouri Fine Arts Academy logo inside.

 Since I was part of the mural class, I was allowed to help paint the larger discipline bubbles--I primarily worked on the vocal music bubble with the mouth and microphone, on the far right--but each Academy-member was also given a smaller, individual area to work on. A lot of students painted encouraging phrases or images, and shared what they felt empowered them as artists. Since I feel inspired by nature, I decided to paint a droplet of water for mine, so the blue sky in the background could show through. 

This was a great learning experience, especially since it required more human interaction than most painters are used to. I benefited immensely from choosing to sacrifice certain ideas to the good of the group, and learning to appreciate approaches to art that are different than my own. I hope to participate in another mural project someday, and will never forget what each contributor, each artist, takes away from it.