Author name: Karla Nathan

Here is a little break from Birdsong talk!

I've spent a lot of years painting murals, I travelled around the country and painted quite a few hotels, day care centers, and even a casino, as well as people's homes.    But the scaffolding and ladders really got to me, so I moved on to other things. 

Every once in a while I'll get to do one again and always enjoy the opportunity. Especially a canvas one that I can work on in my own space and take my time on.  This one was sent to my pal, Kim, for her Tiffany's event, where I am at right now.  (I've pre-posted this)

While this isn't exactly what the front of a real Tiffany's shop looks like, it is just right for the ladies attending Kim's party! Whimsical, fun, and pretty.

Kim wanted something more light hearted than the cold stone of the original building in NY. 

So, we took a few liberties with our design. 

My painting is all free hand..  I just paint as I go.  My lines aren't perfectly straight, but I think that adds to the whimsy and suits my style.

Plus, I know that I could NEVER do straight lines, so I don't even try! But since this was so architectural, I used a level to help out with the door and window shapes.

Here is the inspiration that Kim sent to me.  I used the fanciful nature of this with the stone front of the real building, along with the colors she asked for to come up with the banner design.

Here is my basic sketch for the idea.  We decided to flip the color scheme, so more of the Tiffany Blue would show. The canvas is being used as a backdrop for a photo booth, and with people standing in the middle, not much of the door itself would show.

My first step was getting the canvas ready. I like to paint on drop cloths, but this picture was larger than most seamless dropcloths are.  I found fabric big enough to avoid seams at Darhma Trading Co.

I washed and dried mine hoping to remove the fold marks that way. MAN, WAS THAT A MISTAKE!  It came out of the dryer looking like a wadded up piece of paper.  I had to IRON the whole thing, and 13 x 8' is a lot to man handle over an ironing board.

  I'd say, iron the folds only, don't do it the way I did! 

After struggling with the ironing board till I was  steaming myself,  I laid it out on the floor to cut and pin.  After carefully measuring and cutting, I hemmed the two sides on my sewing machine, and then laid it back out on the floor to pin the rod pocket at the top. I measured and cut it in a way that let me keep the hemline at the bottom as is, no sewing.

By the way, it helps to have a second set of hands to wrangle the fabric and help feed it into the sewing machine, this was a big job and even this lightweight canvas feels weighty when you are trying to sew it due to its size.

Another tip I have is to use duct tape to hold the hem in place along with the pins.  It helped me.

If you are going to hang it with grommets, add these later. We didn't want the ropes to stand out much, so didn't want to use grommets this time.  I cut up strips of the fabric I had trimmed off, and sewed them in half for added strength.  Then zig zagged them to the back of the cloth at regular intervals.

While this will hang from a pole in the rod pocket, I was worried that it would blow or sway in the breeze, so the straps of fabric sewns the the painting's sides can be tied to the structure, and will help secure it and keep it in place.

To do the artwork, I needed a large wall space, so I cleaned out my garage and covered one wall with drop cloths. Then, nailed the canvas up over it. (my drop cloths have also been used previously to make Halloween party ghosts, see the faces on them?)

(yes, I have a giant, sequinned disco ball hanging in my garage, it tells me where to stop my car when I pull in. I've seen people use tennis balls in the same manner but that doesn't seem to be as much fun)

First step was to prime. 

I'm picky about primers, and know its important to use the right one for the job. In this case, a cheap, dry wall primer was fine. And I was glad I used it, because the fabric was thirsty and soaked it right up.

After it was primed and dry, I drew the door, and window with chalk and blocked in the colors.

For a large painting like this, quarts of latex wall paint in flat or eggshell works best for back grounds.

I used a sponge roller brush for the "stone"

To create the awnings, I marked the center of the top of each window, then tied a ribbon to a pencil.  The ribbon was cut to the length from the center of the window to the edge of it.  I held the ribbon at the mid spot, put the pencil on the corner of the window, and while holding the ribbon in place, drew the arc to the other corner.

For depth, I dry brushed a darker aqua over the sponge rolled base color, then did the same, lightly with white. I used white to create the mortar lines too.  The mortar lines are drawn on with a sponge dipped in the white paint.  I didn't want a sharp line that I might have got from a brush.

Next, I finished the window paintings and awnings.  Always work from the background out.  Nearer things are last to paint.

The two topiaries are my foreground, so I blocked those colors in after the windows were done.

Notice the Tiffanys sign? I stupidly painted it too high, over the rod pocket, so painted over it to redo.  Which really isn't a big deal. Its only paint. It can be changed till you get it right.  You might notice my doorknob is different in this picture than in the finished one too.  After I roughed this in, I didn't like  it, and a swath of pink paint over it erased the plain door knob quickly.

For the detail work, I used 2oz bottles of acrylic craft paint.

To get the metallic look that I have on the door knob, jewelry, and chandeliers, I painted them all in regular acrylic paint first to get the shadows, highlights, and shapes. Then, I covered that in  metallic paint.

I used the same 2oz craft bottles.  The silver and white metallic paints are very sheer and take a lot of coats to really cover, but that is what I like about them. I can do just one or two coats over my painting and get the metallic shine, but not cover up the details. But because they are sheer, its hard to build up color.  That is why I do the basic shape in opaque paint first.

When creating a topiary, I always draw the pot with brown paint first, then sketch three circles, connected by twisted stems.  After that, I block in the basic rose shapes, and color the entire background of the balls dark green mixed with a dark brown.

The same principal applies for the foreground as it did for the background. Paint the furthest things first.  I do the sticks and leaves in dark colors, then highlights over that. 

Next comes the leaves from dark to light, adding detail as I go.

I got side tracked and added a few butterflies!

After painting the pot/sticks/leaves/ then roses, I went back and touched up some of the leaves so that they were covering the roses a little bit here and there.

The moss is really easy, just scribbles and swirls with white and gray on a liner brush.  I paint the roses with a 2" flat brush, and the leaves with slightly smaller flat brush, adding veins with a liner brush.

Darker leaves toward the back, lighter in front, gives the illusion of roundness. The roses should face different directions, not all the same.

There is a tutorial on my sidebar with tips on doing a nest.

Layering is important. Make sure it looks like there are items in front of each other.

A few twirling tendrils out the side of the topiary soften the painting.

For the lettering, I used pale grey, outlined with dark brown. On the highlight side, I added a line of watered down white, on the shadowed side, a line of aqua a shade darker than the stones.

Next step, I let the paint cure a few days. Yes, it was dry to the touch, water based paints dry fast. But- I wasn't taking any chances of it sticking together when I rolled it up, so I gave it some time.

To mail it without fold marks, I bought cardboard tube mailers. They weren't big enough to put the 8' high mural inside of, or long enough either, so I duct taped 8 foot's worth of them together, and tightly rolled the canvas around it, then took the roll to the UPS store where they have boxes of all sizes and shapes.

Well, hopefully, when I return from California, I'll have some pictures of my friends and I in front of this storefront! 

For now, I have pics of my own little model whose imagination turned a painting on the wall into a private play house.  Here she is opening the door.

And jumping out of the door to yell surprise.

And dancing through the door.

The pictures I don't have are of her drawing on the door.  Yep, she had some fun with chalk making a picture just like Grammie did. Oh well, it was only chalk and wiped right off, coulda been worse…