How To: Turn a Piece of Wood Into a Piece of Art Part 2

First off let me start by saying Happy New Year! 2009 has been an off and on year for me. I did not create a recap of the year like so many others because it seemed pointless. I have done a lot and accomplished a lot and at the same time, I feel like I have done and accomplished nothing. Moving on...if you missed Part 1 of this How To, then please take a moment to go to it and take a look at it first. Today, I began work on the armor in the image. The original picture shows it to be purple and since that is my son's favorite color, I decided to keep it purple. I do not, however, have purple paint. I used to, until my daughter started using my paints and a lot of stuff from my sewing/craft room got moved. This is not a big problem though, I can easily make purple. Most people know that red and blue mixed will make purple. I used pink and blue though, as I find that using red makes a very dark purple that then has to be lightened and is very hard to get the right shade.

I mixed the pink and just a little bit of blue to come up with a very nice shade of purple. I then used white to lighten the same purple for the metal pieces of the armor. As with the ice, lay down your main colors first, then go back and do the detailing.

Once you have the main colors laid down, you will need to darken and lighten the purple for shading using black or white. Again, as we did with the ice, follow the template of the original image if you do not know where to put highlights and shadows. As before, I also used my fingers as painting tools to blend the paint and give it a smooth look.

As you can see, once again, a little bit of light and dark makes all the difference. Sometimes you will need to use straight black and straight  white to get enough contrast. One of the main things to keep in mind is not to be afraid to try something out. Most of the time, if you make a mistake, it can be painted over or fixed in another way. Now that the purple is done, I moved on to the brown sections. I used the brown straight out of the bottle to start with on the furry boots, and darkened it just a bit with black for the cape.

After laying down the base color, I went back with darker and lighter browns, as well as black and white to add the detailing to the brown portions of the armor. This is where I will be stopping for the night. I would love to keep working, but alas, my vacation is over and I must return to work in the morning. 4:30 am comes early to people like me who HATE mornings. I will continue tomorrow after I get home from work and possibly get this finished then. Until then, have a great day and keep painting!