Thursday, February 16, 2012

colored pencil on wood



When I bought several (closer to a couple dozen) of these maple Kindergarten chairs from a sale at an elementary school I knew that I wanted to decorate them with illustrations that were in keeping with my own style. The pastels that I generally work with were not going to work here so I turned to colored pencils and was able to achieve the detail that I wanted. As you can see from the "before" photo the chairs required some loving care with sandpaper and wood glue. They do, however, still retain some of their distressed charm. I sealed the deal with an oil-based polyurethane that I applied with one of those sponge brushes. I kept getting air bubbles when I used a brush and a salesperson at my hardware store clued me in to the sponge brush.

The fairy chair and one illustrated with a cowboy are available at my shop.

4 comments:

  1. Did you find that any of the color smeared when you brushed on the poly?

    ReplyDelete
  2. No, it did not smear at all. As I remember that's why I used oil-based polyurethane. I think I tested it on a piece of scrap wood first with water-based polyurethane and it was like washing away the image.

    ReplyDelete