Just a quick writeup regarding a painting demonstration I provided my club...the carving to the left was carved along with a couple of carvers I coach in the art of caricature carving. It's founded on busts generated out of Marv Kaisersatt's book and is a good way to teach face carving. A while back our club was seeking content for our monthly meeting and I forgot to take one step back sooooo a painting demonstration seemed like a good idea. I don't believe the club was thinking they would get a demonstration but rather a discussion. For me its all in the teaching as anyone can just talk about it. Many folks out there struggle with painting their carvings especially when it comes to the strength of paint color. I laid it all out there for them and demonstrated it through the carvings dipping in the antiquing mixture. The carving at left has since been waxed and buffed. One item of note, I demonstrated with Sharpie markers for shirt stripes and as you can somewhat see the colors bled...its important to test this prior to painting on your carving as experiences will vary.
This carving was painted using round brushes, H2O, a paper palette, acrylic paints, BLO, Deft, and Feed-N-Wax. The most important portion of the process is to ensure you have thinned each paint so only a hint of pigment is showing. Please understand that the color red requires a great amount of water and white is just the opposite. A 'test block' is an important accessory when painting, its just a scrap block that you can test on. The paper palette (or Styrofoam plate) is the best for mixing paints as it allows you to draw the pigment to the water rather than trying to mix the appropriate amount of each in a cup.
No matter what...painting takes practice and in order to practice you have to have cleanly carved carvings...so what are you waiting for???? Carve something!
