Over the weekend, I acquired a chair. This is no ordinary chair. I’ll blog about this chair later. But it’s awesome. It’s green and awesome. I’m now rearranging my living room around this chair. I had a large painting on my wall that I did probably 6 years ago. It was painted pinks and purples and blues because my living room at the time had these colors in it. It was just a simple square pattern, not much to it. But I liked it. It was graphically fun and fit the room perfectly. Well, I’ve moved from that location and still have had this painting in my living room for several years. It was time for a change.
So, this new painting I wanted to be vintage looking, with large type, and also to be a chalkboard. Why? Because I found a can of chalkboard paint that I had leftover from a previous project. So I did some research online for old restaurant signs. I found some inspiration pictures and used Illustrator to mock up what I wanted this new painting to look like. It’s pretty simple. But I wanted it too look like it was made of wood. That was the only really challenging part.
I first drew out on the old canvas where I wanted the chalkboard paint to go. Then I did a couple coats of the chalkboard paint. I used Valspar Chalkboard paint. It went on great and ended up being really easy and fun to write on when it dried.
Next, I started with a coat of brown paint. I didn’t really love the color that the first coat turned out, so I did a little darker coat of brown over it. Then I just sort of freehanded in some of the wood grain over top of it. This was a little challenging but I had a printout of some wood textures that I used as a guide.
Next, I transferred my Illustrator design to the canvas with a pencil. Then I started painting in my lettering. The lettering took a few coats but it went fairly quickly because the letters were so big.
Lastly, I hung it up and played around with the chalk. It really worked great and was really fun. I don’t know what I’ll be writing on this canvas. A giant grocery list? A to-do list for the day? (note that these last photos are showing the scale of this painting. It’s 24×48 in). Knowing my memory, a life size list is probably beneficial for me. Who knows! But it’s fun and I really like it.
