A Friend in Need

My daughter has a friend, who has a blog.......you can find it here.  She is redoing one room in her apartment and really likes birds.  I had a small canvas maybe 12X16.  I thought I could replicate her blog header on the canvas for her apartment.  So I gave it a try.......

It wasn't to terribly difficult.

First I painted the canvas with Gesso because it had another painting on it.  Then I painted it with a mix of blue and grey blended together. 

  I enlarged her blog header to an 8X10 as you can see in the picture below.   Then I used my favorite transfer method.

 

Gray Graphite Paper

Found here.  (I am quite sure Michaels has this as well.) You can make your own with tracing paper and a no.2 pencil.  By rubbing the lead from the pencil all over one side of the tracing paper you would then have graphite paper.  You have to be very careful when you first use it because it will be very dark so you must not press really hard.  It can be used over and over and it just gets better with use.  

You take it and place it graphite side down on your canvas or board what ever it is you want to have a pattern on .  Then you place your pattern over the top of the graphite paper and trace around the edges of the objects in your pattern using a pen or a Stylist found here which is what I did here around the bird and the branches.  You then lift off the pattern and then the graphite paper and your pattern in now on the canvas or board.  

The next step was to fill in the pattern.  here I used Charcoal Acrylic paint Deco brand, and filled everything in.  I had to improvise because as I said the canvas was bigger than the 8X10 pattern.  So the branches had to get longer. 

Here is her finished project.  

A lovely Thank You Card followed.  She is very sweet and I am glad I was able to make this for her.

Linking to Feathered Nest Friday
Flaunt it Friday