I found a couple of canvasses (is that the correct plural spelling for canvas?? hmmm, looks strange!) Anyway, I found them at a local thrift store a few days ago. They were already painted on, but hey they were only a quarter! A quarter, I couldn’t pass that up! I brought them home and set them aside for a few days. Then Lael spotted them and immediately wanted to paint. She was sort of upset about having to work with an already used canvas, but I assured her when I was finished with them, they would be as good as new!
I started off by painting over the canvas with 2 coats of white acrylic paint. This took care of most of the previous artists vision. But, you could still see it a bit. Then I remembered the gesso I had squirreled away from a long ago art project. Here is a link if you don’t know what gesso is from Dick Blick. I love to browse the Dick Blick website and drool over all the artsy fun stuff! Anyway, I put a coat of gesso over the 2 coats of acrylic and Ta-Da! they look like brand new canvasses!
The next day the twins were ready to paint. Caeden was even excited about a blank slate to create on. He couldn’t believe they were the same canvasses. I asked him what he was going to paint. He answered, I don’t know! Then he immediately picked up the paintbrush. I was like, ummmm Caeden – What are you painting? Do you want to look online to find an image or something to draw and then paint. His answer? No! I’m just gonna paint!
Well, ok then –
Now for Lael – she is more like me as an artist. She wanted a plan. We went online and found this cute owl image. She started off by sketching the owls, moon and tree branch in pencil. This involved a lot of sketching and erasing to get it just right. Then she went in search of the perfect shades of each color for the moon, the owls and the background. This required quite a bit of mixing paint. Mixing paint translates to paint on her arms, legs, face, shirt, chair and numerous paintbrushes. Her finished product turned out wonderful. Of course she worked on hers about 1.5 hours longer than Caeden did. That is just so typical – I promise they are twins!
