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!

How To: Turn a Piece of Wood Into a Piece of Art Part 1

I put some pictures up earlier this week of the woodburning/paintings I did for my family for Christmas. Those of you who saw the post and commented seemed to like what I had done, and those, honestly, were not the best ones I've done. I didn't have enough time to put as much detail work into them as I wished. So now I am working on a new woodburning/painting for my son for a belated Christmas gift. (I will also be making one for my daughter.) I figured I'd put up a tutorial of sorts for anyone interested in seeing the process in a step-by-step way. Forgive the pictures, our good digital camera decided to be a p.o.s. (piece of shit) and is not working right now so all the photos were taken on my phone.

First, find a starter image. If you can draw, unlike me, then you can create your own starter image. If you are like me, and can't draw well enough to use for a project like this, then search the internet for your starting image. To my knowledge, so long as you do not try to pass the art off as original and do not intend to make a profit off it there should be no copyright infringement. My son is very much into World of Warcraft, so this is my starting image for his picture.

You will, of course, need a piece of wood the size you want the picture to be. I printed this image on standard paper so I have a piece of wood 8 1/2" X 11". I am using 1/4 inch paneling, because it was FREE. I know the owner of a cabinet shop here in town and he gives me scrap wood at no charge.

Once you print the image to the size you want, you will need carbon paper and a ball point pen. Tape the carbon paper and printed image to your piece of wood (after sanding, if needed) and trace the main outline and details of the image. What you end up with should look something like this.

After tracing your image, you can then move on to woodburning the outline and details that you traced. This is not required if you want to just paint it, but it's what I do so bear with me. Most wood-burners come with multiple tips. I only use one, it is thin enough to make fine lines and I can also shade with it. It is the one that's shape most resembles a pen.

Take your time and wood burn the outline you created. You can add as much or as little shading as you desire. I have found that the acrylic paints I use don't stick well to the burned wood areas so I have started doing less detailing with the burner. I basically just outline and do the areas that are solid black.

Depending on how you wish your image to look, you can do more shading and detail with the wood burner and leave it unpainted. I like painting because I can add so much more detail. To start with I will be painting the Ice Throne. I will be using a combination of 4 paint colors for the ice and snow. Plain White, Metallic Pearl White, Metallic Blue Sapphire, and Metallic Sequin Black. I love metallic paints, especially for things that are supposed to be shiny/sparkly. For those of you who don't have a tote full of paint sitting around at home, don't go running to the store and buy every single color there is. I keep a few basic colors and mix most of my colors on a butter bowl lid. This works very well for me and uses little paint.

Once you have chosen your colors to start with, paint your main colors in the correct areas. Keep your printed copy of the image handy for reference, or on the computer. This part is the tedious part, as well as time consuming. Make sure you have a small tip paint brush for getting into the tiny areas.

This is what I have after putting down the main colors. The blue areas indicating ice and the white areas indicating snow. Now to add some depth. You will need to use the same colors to add highlighting and shadow. The blue area in my painting is not straight out of the bottle. If you look at the starter image, you will see that it is a grey blue in color. I mixed the metallic blue, metallic black, and a touch of white to get the desired color. I also use a little water to thin the paint and help it reamain spreadable. This is one advantage to working with acrylics, that can be reconstitured to some extent with water, yet they dry quickly for impatient people like me that don't want to wait hours to move on to the next part of the project. Use your starter image as a guide if you are not much of a painter. It will show you exactly where to put the lights and darks to get the depth you need. Don't be afraid to use your fingers to 'blend' your paint. I do a lot. My fingers tend to get more paint on them then the brush sometimes. After addint the shading and highlighting your image should look something like this.

This is the point that I am stopping at for the night. It is almost 2:00 am and I need sleep. I will be working on this more tomorrow and will continue the tutorial then. I hope that this helps anyone interested in creating some beautiful art to learn something new. Good luck, and if you are doing something similar, please let me know. I love to share art!

Merry Christmas!!

I have not posted in a few days and that is due to the fact that I have had a very busy and eventful few days. From the time I got off work Thursday I was trying desperately to finish the gifts I was making for my brother's family as they were going to be there THAT NIGHT. It was a race of sorts to see if I got finished before they got here. I almost did. I had to finish up one gift after getting the kids all sorted into beds. Take a look at what they got.

For my sister-in-law

for my 12-year old nephew

for my 8-year old nephew

for my 8-year old niece

I did not have time to put a lot of detail into these, but I am still pleased with how they turned out. The kids loved theirs and my sister-in-law has asked me to make two more so that she can have a set of them for one of the rooms in their home. I was so glad they liked their gifts.

Christmas morning was wonderful. I had not gotten to sleep until 4:15 that morning trying to finish up the gifts and wrap the last of the stocking stuffers. Then I had to fill all of the stockings of course. Regardless of this, I was still the first one awake at 7:30am (except Kevin, but he remained in bed until I awoke). I proceeded to skip through the house, waking everyone with the chant "Get up, get up, it's Christmas!!" My kids dug into their stockings while we waited for everyone to gather around the tree. Then the presents were handed out. It was a marvelous time! I love to watch the kids and other family open their gifts and see the expressions of joy (hopefully) on their faces as they see what they got for Christmas. Having my brother here was absolutely wonderful. We got to talking about the last time we have spent a Christmas together and realized it has been 10 years since we were last together for Christmas. We have decided that we need to visit each other more frequently, and will be looking into making a trip to his home in the spring.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and that you all have a Happy New Year! I will get a new featured image up hopefully later today, and I hope you all forgive me for not getting it done Thursday since I was a tad bit preoccupied.