It's like coloring... With paint... On a giant canvas...

Years ago our local art store had a 4' by 5' canvas that had been damaged during shipping. While it was not a total loss they could not sell it for full price. They sold it to my husband for pennies on the dollar. Both of us have been to intimated by the large, white canvas to paint on it. It has sat in our house, slid behind various things out of the way since it's purchase. My husband and I were talking one day recently and he said he would love to have a huge logo on that canvas for the new studio. Well, I may not be able to airbrush but I can color pretty well, so I decided I would paint it for him.

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First thing was first. The canvas was gessoed in white. It needed to be a black background. So... Outside I went. We had one spray paint can of black and I was going to use that. It didn't go very far on the 20 square feet, probably because I am an inexperienced spray paint user and didn't use it most efficiently. I ran to Michael's to get some more black spray paint. We were using the Liquitex brand acrylic water based spray paint. Sadly they did not have anymore in stock but they did have Montana Gold acrylic. I grabbed it, thinking it was compatible. I ran back home to finish covering this huge canvas. It quickly became apparent when I began spraying this was not the same type of product. While it was acrylic, it was a solvent based acrylic and not water based like the original Liquitex I had used. My husband, god love him, knew immediately what was going on, walked outside, and told me they wouldn't talk to each other well. I'm still such a novice about a lot of things. He has a lifetime of knowledge in areas such as chemical compatibility and mechanical areas. Soon I pretty much understood the two sprays were like oil and water. Bummer. Back up and punt I guess.

We batted a couple of ideas around and finally decided to get a small latex house paint sample in black from Lowe's and just roll the whole thing with a small roller. I did and let it dry overnight. The next day the real work began. I set up the canvas in our bedroom on a large tote in a corner to hold it steady. There was no easel in the entire house large enough for this piece. With the canvas on one side of the room I set the projector up on the dresser on the other side of the room so it would show the image large enough for me to trace it out. I took my white chalk pencil and went to work. There were so many paint splashes and tiny gaps it took awhile just to do that part. Then, the real work began.

I had bought the colors in shades I did not already have when I was picking up the ill fated Montana Gold so I didn't have to custom mix any colors. I knew it would save me time. And while I was pretty sure the studio wouldn't be ready before I was, I knew I was working a lot so needed to grab time anywhere I could. The cool thing about buying my paint at Michael's is they have a rewards program with various specials. The week I had bought the paint the special happened to be a $5 voucher for every $25 spent. While I did spend some on paint, I got future Michael's money back. So... I saved?

I dove in, and some days later it was done. There were still some things wrong with it, I knew. I could see those, but overall I was pretty happy with it. We moved it onto the wall wide counter in the studio where it will eventually hang. Right now it is sitting on the counter there. We had some fun with it one day recently. We received an order from one of our suppliers, SprayGunner. They threw in a pair of branded sunglasses. In thanks I snapped a selfie in front of the logo and my husband and I both thought the backdrop looked pretty good for a selfie.

You can see in the photos on this post how I clearly had no idea what I was doing with the black spray paint. I was just like... Welp, here goes nothin'. And then the process and finally the end product. If you want to check out Michael's reward's program I mentioned, you can see info here: https://www.kqzyfj.com/click-100330607-14545779

Be well, y'all.