I know I promised this sooo, soooo, sooooo long ago. But when I get to painting, that is exactly what I do – Paint! It is hard for me to drop the brush for anything – to include if my kids need something. I have come to the conclusion that the most torturous thing I do to myself is ’stop and come back later’ when it comes to a painting. I’m working on one now that is finished other than the name and I’m dying!!! Dying, I tell ya’!
As I was working on this one, it hit me that I needed to show you guys how to do it! I know I’ve explained several times, but it is so much better when you have pictures. Now listen to me, these are not the best pictures! I was working with 2 paint brushes that both were covered in paint. Normally one was in my mouth and the other in my hand as I was balancing my garganteous camera!!!
It was heavy for a weak girl like me.
Okay – so now that we have established the quality of the pictures, let’s continue . . . .
The first step is to pencil the letter{s}. I think this is the first big difference with my painting vs. some others. When I first started, I would actually draw out the letter {versus writing the letter.} Then I would stress how I couldn’t “paint” within the lines of my drawing. Then I would try to clean up the lines as my letter got bigger and bigger and more distorted. One day it just hit me to write the letter out and ‘paint on the line’ not in them.
And guess what . . . . it totally worked.
I could have broke this one up into 2 steps . . . but I forgot. I forgot to take a picture with the second step!!!! AHHH – the reason this is a hard post!
The next step is to eyeball {which I do alot of} as to what size I want the finished letter to be. I pick a small part of the letter {if I can} and use the size paintbrush that will give me the finished size. Here it was the cap {or top} of the ‘J.’
Then I take a thin liner – usually a 1 – and just go over my lines. One stroke only! The one stroke is really important. I don’t know why, but it is!
I then get a round brush – here, it was a size 2 – and start ’shaping’ out my letter. I don’t try to make my lines perfect, I just paint.
Then I fill in the letter – normally with a filbert of whatever size. I still don’t worry about the edges until the next step.
Take the original {thin} liner that was used to paint a single stroke over the penciled line in the second/third step and clean up the newly painted lines.
This time, I had several canvases that were being grouped together. But the thing is, I eyeballed the size. Now, I have to eyeball the size on the other canvas. I usually just line them up and . . . . eyeball it!
It really doesn’t matter if you shade before or after you measure it to the other canvases, but I’m trying to keep these pictures in order as they happened in real time!
Shading is just one of those things you just go with. I don’t have any secrets with shading. I just shade.
And there you go! That is how you ‘J.’
Oh, and I guess I should show you the ‘E’ that was measured up to the ‘J.’ {Would have been rude for me to end the post here!!!}
