Silly Monkey

My dear friend is having a baby, and is planning his nursery around a sock monkey theme. When she had her daughter, I painted classic pooh to go with her daughters nursery theme. I love using what talents I have to create things unique to give as gifts instead of purchase something, so my gift for her will be a set of sock monkey paintings.

I’ve completed one so far, and I have 3 more I will do. The canvas’ are small, about 8″x8″. I’ll try and go through the “how-to” in putting this painting together, though it’s a bit more complicated to describe than icing a cupcake :-). Feel free to post any questions and I’ll do my best to elaborate on anything I may leave out.

To start off any work of art, you need an inspiration:

The original fabric is wonderful. An alternative to recreating these cute faces on canvas could be to just stretch the fabric over stretcher strips. These can be purchased at your local craft store. You can also google “stretch my own canvas” for instructions. I’m lazy, so I don’t stretch my own canvas’, but if I ever have the occasion to, I’ll definitely post a how to on the blog.

I chose to paint with acrylic. I enjoy painting in oil the most out of all other mediums, but for what I would consider a relatively simple project, I chose acrylic. I recommend using a mid-range quality of acrylic paint and brushes for the project. Quality paint and brushes are always a wise investment. When you buy the cheaper supplies, not only does your final product not look as best as it should, but you often have to replace cheap brushes because they never last.

One of the things that painters are able to do, and learn to do more with experience, is to see variants of colors in what most people would see as perhaps just one color. One of the OCD things that I do when I paint is take an unnecessary amount of time to mix my colors up to have it match the original. A good artist should never apply a color straight from the tube. Look at the color of the original, study it, notice the differences in hues and tones, and take the extra time to mix up your palette to work with *before* you start anything.

The next step after mixing colors, is to sketch out the image.

I sketched this out using a charcoal pencil. In hindsight, this is not the best to use when painting with acrylic because it blends with the paint. Had I painted using oils, the paint would have simply covered it. The next paintings I will sketch out with a pencil :-).

Next, I painted the largest part of the image, which is the background color. When I looked at the image from the fabric, I noticed hues of brown and various tones of green. Rather than trying to copy it identically, I took the original as a starting point and then created my own background of various hues, shades, tones, [insert other art vocabulary], etc ;-).

As you can see in the tiny tumbnail image next to my painting, the green doesn’t match *exactly*, but that’s ok. Each artist interprets what they see differently, so exact replica’s aren’t necessary.

Next, I filled in the other remaining spaces with a base color. For places like his body, that are several colors, chose one color that stands out to you the most. I can’t remember in my art class days if you were supposed to pick the darkest color you see, or the lightest color. I’m defiant, and tend to chose the mid-range color (unless that’s what you’re really supposed to do). I don’t know that there really is a right or wrong way to choose a base color!

Finally, I added detail and depth, and the cartoonish outlining to finish it all off. I didn’t have a stipple brush to do the monkey’s body, so I improvised using a very small brush and sweeps of the various colors. It was an unnecessarily complicated process, that could have been easily mended with the correct tools that I will be sure to have before I work on the next painting!

I promise to post all of the other paintings as I create them!

Kindergarten Holiday Festivities

Since my son is now in elementary school, I’ve entered into the realm coming up with things to do for J’s class and teacher.

Much to my delight at his first parent teacher conference, his teacher cited his intensity and interest in drawing and coloring in class. I remember being told stories of how I was the exact same way as a child. How exciting, my child can share in my passion!

So I was looking forward to the opportunity to do something fun for his teacher and class, and as the Holiday’s approached, I began my research.

If there’s anything you learn about me through this little blog, it’s that I google everything under the sun. Having no experience purchasing/making a gift for a teacher, I literally googled what to get a kindergarten teacher! There weren’t any ideas popping up that were striking my fancy, but with persistence and variant search terms, I came to the beginning of a conclusion. The most memorable and cherished gifts teachers receive are hand made.

So the googling begins again, and I came across this. Being short on funds, I brainstormed how to make the idea my own from what supplies I had on hand.

One thing I had on hand was cork board from another project idea left unfinished. I still kept the original idea, of making coasters out of his handprints.

I traced J’s hand onto a piece of cardstock. I cut out the cardstock, and traced it onto the cork. Using a box cutter (which I wouldn’t necessarily recommend), and with a cutting mat or a kitchen cutting board underneath, I carefully cut out each hand. The best way to do this I found was with light pressure and repeating the cuts until you break through the back. I had to be extra careful around the tips of the fingers so that I didn’t accidentally amputate one!

Now the cork board that I used seemed flaky. I’m not sure if it’s because it was old and perhaps dried out, the “quality” of the kind of cork I was working with, or if cork just isn’t made to be cut into obscure shapes. Not sure how to recommend remedying this. There’s a variety of things that one could do. Spray them with a clear coat after they are completed so that they don’t flake anymore, glue a ribbon around the edging, etc.

Once cut out, the hands were adorable. Then I made a mistake. I thought that if I painted them a base white, they would look cleaner, nicer, and it would be easier for J to paint them up and make them his own. Now you may be wondering, won’t the paint bleed and come off when someone puts a cup with condensation on it? Alas, I googled it, and acrylic is waterproof :-).

Once I completely covered the surface of the cork, it looked like lumpy misshapen hands with no real evidence that they were made from cork. So unhappy with their progress, I scratched them 2 days before his last day of school before break.

With no time left to tediously cut out his handprints from cork again, I cut 4 standard normal coasters. I then had J line them up together to form one big box. Then I gave him some paints, a brush, and complete creative freedom to paint what he wanted (with some gentle suggestions here and there).

The only time he’s ok with painting flowers are when he knows its for a girl :-). Flowers were my suggestion, the rest of the decisions were 100% his. I don’t have green acrylic paint, so he improvised. The flowers are growing out of water. We didn’t have yellow for the center of the flowers, so he improvised and was ok with using a pale orange. Once they dried, I took a permanent marker and outlined the seemingly meaningless blobs of color so his teacher would understand what he was trying to portray. J was happy with my modifications. I then had him write his name on the back of each of the 4 coasters. I then wrote the date.

So we separated the 4, and tied them with ribbon. Viola! J has a handmade gift for his teacher!

Now moving onto the rest of his class, I had J draw a card for his classmates. No normal 6yr old would be up for creating 20 separate cards, so I had him work hard on just one card. I then scanned it and printed out 20 color copies of his card. I included a photo of him, and voila, holiday cards for his class! (pardon the poor photo quality)

From what J told me his classmates reactions were and his teachers reaction, his gifts went over well. Creative success!