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Tips for Carving and
Painting by Roz
Getting Ready to Paint - Setup
To setup to paint, I tape a piece of
freezer paper (found in most grocery stores) down to the top of my
workbench - the shiny side needs to be up.
I super-saturate a folded paper towel and place it on the upper
left portion of the freezer paper. I
place my paints right on the wet paper towel.
As long as I keep that paper towel wet, my acrylic paints will
stay workable. Naturally I may need to replenish colors as they get used up.
The oblong plastic container above the freezer paper is used to
cover the paints at night to keep them from hardening.
I
can usually paint off of this setup for up to a week - replenishing
paints and adding fresh freezer paper as they get used up.
The rest of the freezer paper is used to put my different mixes
on. When mixing a color, I dip my brush in whatever colors are
going in the mix and placing the dabs on a clean spot of the freezer
paper, adding water whenever necessary.
On
the right side of the freezer paper, I place my plastic water container
on top of a dry folded paper towel, which is used for wiping my brushes.
In my water container is a vinyl-coated large-mesh screen, which
keeps my brushes from collecting paint scum after I have been painting
awhile. I seldom change my
water. I feel that having a small
amount of every color I use on a particular piece in the dirty water
container is a way of unifying the paint job and having every color used
be part of every paint mix.
You
can see in the photo that I have an airbrush squirt bottle for adding
large amounts of water either to dampen the paint paper towel or to
dilute a mix for a wash. The
other water container is a spray bottle.
On very dry days, I sometimes use the spray to freshen the tops
of the paint blobs. Also you can see my can of paint brushes handily placed and
ready for action.
Speaking
of action, I had better get to “work” painting a baby bluebird.
Check the Tips page often, as I will be showing you new
“stuff” periodically. |
