I seem to be in a creative slump lately. Whenever this happens, I find myself reorganizing my craft room or blog surfing to find inspiration to recreate projects other crafty people have shared. This time I wanted to try a different approach! I'm not sure where I came up with this crazy idea, but it sure was a first: I decided to give painting a try. If there is one thing I know about myself, it is that I can not draw or paint for the life of me. I just can't. Never could. Not sure if it's in the same part of the brain, but my handwriting is pretty awful too.
So, I went old school "paint by numbers". I poked around my local craft stores for kits but they were just too boring to me. I found a seller on Amazon who had 16 x 20 inch paint by number kits. I liked the idea of the larger size and the price was pretty reasonable ($13) for a new, experimental craft.
I received the kits within a few days, and then purchased a heavy-duty sketch board from Michael's. I wanted to mount the canvas to a board of some kind to so I'd be able to prop it up while painting. I realize now, after one painting finished, what I really need is an easel. Go figure.
Just for size reference, here is a picture of my Yorkshire Terrier (loyal crafting partner) Piper. This project apparently bored him to sleep.
The kit was packaged in a slim box containing approximately 25 acrylic paint pots, a folded 16 x 20 inch canvas, three paint brushes, a small photo of what the finished painting will look like, a paper diagram of the painting for reference and a page of instructions. I prepped the canvas by lightly ironing the back side to remove the creases. As I wanted to make sure the edges of the painting were straight, I used green tape to adhere the canvas to the sketch board.
Let's start with the instructions. They were hysterical! So much so, that the only good use for them was comic relief around the office. My coworkers got a kick out of the poorly translated (to English) directions. The very first direction read: "Daub the color lump with pigment evenly and thickly. Try to no daub the pigment out of the edge of the color lump. Make the edge and the numbers are covered wholly by colors".
It gets better: "Maybe some friend have good painting foundation, you can drawing a character painting following you favor." OK, so it looks like I'm on my own to figure this out!
I found the paint was very thick and difficult to spread, so I dipped my brush in water to help thin it out. I was also afraid of running out of paint, and wanted to use the water to stretch the amount. While it did help, next time I will go easier on the water. In some areas the color seemed a little too thin, and it turns out I didn't need to stretch out the paint so much.
It didn't take me long to finish the painting. I found it very relaxing. I worked on it for about 2 hours at a time and it probably took me 6 days...12 hours - ish.
I found a wooden frame (from the same person on Amazon who sold the painting) for about $11. With my husband's assistance, we stretched the canvas over the frame and tacked it in place. I thought the frame was a tad pricey and believe it should have came with the kit, but for a total of $24 I was entertained for a few weeks.
I did purchase a second painting and will probably start that in a few weeks.....if my crafting creativity juices don't flow soon. If you want to see the next painting in process, I'll take pictures and post them on twitter -
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