Click To Enlarge The Photo
You may print and use image as a visual
reference while you paint it.
§ "Christmas Holiday Plaque" §
© Via Von ~ Come Paint With Me!™
Victorian Via Von 2003
Click To Enlarge The Photo
You may print and use image as a visual
reference while you paint it.
This Christmas Holiday Plaque design is based on a 19th Century greeting card that I have in my collection of Victorian ephemera. It is a very simple design, yet it requires you to know how to:
use a flat, round, angle and liner brush
paint comma strokes
paint liner strokes
double-load a brush
side-load a brush
dry brush
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
TO PAINT THIS PATTERN
| Surface:
A wood piece 9" x 5-1/2" in size. (Our Hemlock Rectangle is the wood piece I used for this pattern.) You may certainly use anything else you have handy that will fit the dimensions of this pattern. |
Brushes:
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Delta Paints:
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Additional Materials:
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Click To Enlarge The Pattern Line Drawing
You may print or right click to save the large line drawing to your hard-drive.
You may reduce or enlarge the line drawing to fit your surface's requirement.
PLEASE NOTE: You may have noticed that this design's black and white line drawing has Christmas Text Greeting on it but the finished piece does not. While most people celebrate a Holiday around this time of year, not all people celebrate Christmas. This design is intended to be universal to the Season. To use the Text Greeting portion, you should transfer the design to tracing paper for visibility of placement.
Basic Instructions:
Prepare your piece by sanding the bare wood with the #200 grit sandpaper, removing any burrs or bits and rough edges. Remove the dust with your tack cloth.
Prepare a mix of Final Coat Low Gloss + Raw Linen. The ratio is 1:1 (i.e., one part Final Coat to one part paint). You can use your palette knife or a craft stick or a tooth pick to mix the Final Coat and paint together.
Using your #1" Flat or Sponge Brush, seal your wood with the sealer+paint mix you made in Step #3.
Sand gently with #600 grit sand paper or Super Film and remove any dust with your tack cloth.
IF your piece looks like it should have one more coat of either color (Do you see wood showing through it ? Does it look a bit streaked or something? -- that's your clue!) THEN, using your 1" Flat or Sponge Brush, give your piece one more coat of just the acrylic paint alone ... i.e., just the Raw Linen ... not the sealer+paint mix. Gently sand again with the #600 grit sand paper or Super Film and remove any dust with a tack cloth.
You will use your # 3/4" Flat Brush for base-coloring the center medallions' petals, the holly leaves and the ribbon.
You will use your # 1/4" Angle Brush for all shading the base underneath the design as well as within the design. You will also use this brush for highlighting the center medallions' petals, the holly leaves, and the ribbon highlight-drybrush.
You will use your # 1/8" Angle Brush for shading in those teeny-tiniest areas below, above or within the design.
You will use your # 5 Round for the berries, the outer ring flowers and the pearl drops off the gold filigree in the center and at each horizontal side.
You will use your #1 Round for the gold filigree work and the flower sprigs coming off each horizontal side.
You will use your Liner/Detailer for the gold filigree highlight and shading, the holly leaves veins, the horizontal flower sprig's tendrils as well as the berry highlights.
You will use the Fini Glaze to help with all of your floating and liner brush work. See our Class Room's Seminar Archives on this product for full information on how Fini can assist you with these strokes!
Have two rinse water basins for this project!!! The Gleams Metallic paints have lovely little particles of metallic that give your painting it's special look ... but ... the particles will also float in the water and transfer onto any brush that is rinsed in that water basin. It is best to have one water basin for regular brush rinsing and another for the metallic brush rinsing and clean well any brush that has been used with the Gleams Metallic paints before you use it again with the regular acrylic paint.
Take a few moments along the way as needed to allow your piece to dry before moving on to the next step. Refer to the photo enlargement for visual assistance with any of the painting details that may be confusing to you. Oftentimes, just looking at that "thing" will help you get a full understanding of the written instructions. :-)
Let's Begin!
Lay the tracing paper and pattern on the wood piece. With your pencil, copy the pattern's outlines to transfer it to your wood piece.
With Mudstone and your #1/4" Angle Brush shade underneath the entire design outline, keeping to the bottom of the pattern to create the shadow effect.
With Oyster White and your 3/4" Flat brush, base the center medallion's petals
With Green Isle and your #3/4" Flat Brush, base all of the holly leaves and the horizontal curlicues near the flower sprigs.
With Opaque Blue and your #3/4" Flat Brush, base the ribbon.
With Oyster White and your #5 Round brush, base all of the pearl drops and the four outer ring flowers.
With Opaque Red and your #5 Round Brush, base all of the berries.
With Opaque Red and your #1 Round Brush, base all of the horizontal flower sprigs.
With Gleams Kim Gold and your #1 Round Brush, base all of the gold filigree work. (Remember -- rinse your brush in a separate water basin and be sure to clean the brush thoroughly before using it for acrylic paint again!)
With Trail Tan and your #1/4" Angle Brush, shade the interior and outside edges of the 4 outer ring flowers. Shade the center medallion's petals and bring up several light, gentle streaks in the interior of each petal using the chisel edge of the brush. Deepen the shading as needed under the gold filigree. You can also a little 1:1 mix of Trail Tan and the Mudstone to bring out the shadow even more underneath the gold filigree. You can also use your Liner/Detailer and a very thin mix of water and Chocolate Cherry to lightly punch up the center medallion petals right at the edge where they meet that background.
With Hunter Green and your #1/4" Angle Brush, shade the lower halves of the holly leaves. Also shade where they coming out from under each other, the center medallion or the berries and where they directly meet those items, deepen those shadows further with the Black Green.
With Fini-thinned Hunter Green and your Detailer/Liner, also run a tiny shadow along the bottom of the two horizontal curlicues by the flower sprigs.
With Fini-thinned Black Green and your Detailer/Liner, paint in the veins on the holly leaves. Refer to the black and white line drawing or the finished photo for placement assistant.
With water-thinned Chocolate Cherry and your # 1/8" Angle Brush, shade the lower halves of the berries and where they overlap each other. Use your artistic license and determine for yourself which berry you want lying on top of the other! :-) Now with Fini-thinned Chocolate Cherry, deepen the crevices where those berries overlap. (If nothing else, this step will give you a better understanding of just how different water is compared to Fini when it comes to the paint consistency and colour richness/retention you get when mixed with either one!)
Still using the water-thinned Chocolate Cherry and your # 1/8" Angle Brush, shade the lower halves of the horizontal flower sprays.
With Payne's Grey and your # 1/4" Angle Brush, shade the ribbon's outer edges. Shade a very slight shadow crease starting along the upper middle of each of the main ribbon strands and sloping downward, stopping well short of those outer edges. Also shade along the interior rim where the ribbon curves up and under the gold filigree as well as where it curves around and under the main ribbon strand. Use Black to deepen the shadow immediately under the rolled edge where it meets the ribbon lying on top of it.
Using White and your # 1/4" Angle Brush, highlight the center medallion's petals, staying to the top and outside edges only.
With Fini-thinned Gleams Bronze and your Liner/Detailer Brush, shade both outer sides of all of the gold filigree, staying very close to those outside edges! This will give your gold filigree it's shadow bevel.
With Fini-thinned Gleams Pale Gold and your Liner/Detailer Brush, run haphazard streaks along the very center of all of the gold filigree, lifting the brush occasionally to create gaps. This will give your gold filigree it's highlight bevel.
Still using the Fini-thinned Gleams Pale Gold and your Liner/Detailer Brush, add highlights to the gold filigree balls at the end of the center medallion, staying to the top and just outside the center of each gold ball.
Using Gleams Pearl Finish and your # 1/4" Angle Brush, cover coat all of the center medallion petals.
Using Gleams Pearl Finish and your # 5 Round, cover coat all of the pearls and all four outer ring flowers.
Using Blue Jay and your # 1/4" Angle Brush, wipe almost all of the paint off on your paper towel to dry-brush the soft highlights onto the ribbon's top edge, along the inward crease and above the curl and along the bottom outer portion of the curl.
Using Perfect Highlight Green and your # 1/4" Angle Brush, highlight all of the holly leaves, staying to the top portion of the leaves above the ribbon and to the extreme bottom portion of the leaves which are below the ribbon. Then highlight in between the leaves veins, again following the same principle used for whether the leaf is above or below the ribbon.
Using the Perfect Highlight Red and your # 1/8" Angle Brush, highlight all of the berries and the horizontal flower sprigs.
Using a 1:1 mix of the Perfect Highlight Red and Oyster White, thin with Fini and put a light curved streak to create the reflective shine on the berries and highlights on the tops of the horizontal flower sprigs.
Using your # 1 Round and alternating the Opaque Red and Green Isle, paint in the dots on the horizontal flower sprigs.
Now sit back and study your image. Does your gold filigree look beveled enough? If not, run more of the Gleams Bronze around the outer edges or run a more of the Gleams Pale Gold. Does something else need to be punched out more? Do you need to deepen a shadow here or there or highlight something a bit more to bring it up? Be artistic! Play with it until it satisfies YOU!
FINALLY ... if you are going to add the Christmas Text Greeting, put several layers/coats (letting each coat dry before doing the next layer) of the Fini Glaze all by itself over top of the design areas where the text will be placed. This will help protect your hard work in the event you have a mistake painting the text portion and need to wipe it off. Lay your tracing paper design on top of the painted piece and align it as carefully as possible to the painted design . Tape it in two places to solidly secure it. Using either the dark or the light tracing papers as appropriate, trace over the text to transfer it to the painted design. Using your Liner/Detailer and thinned Opaque Blue OR Opaque Red OR Green Isle (you decide which you want to use!), paint in the text located on the center medallion's flower petals. Using your Liner/Detailer and thinned Oyster White, paint in the text located on the ribbon.
Now don't forget to SIGN your work!
When your piece is thoroughly dry, erase any visible tracing lines remaining.
Then, protect and finish your piece with several coats of Final Coat Low Gloss, following the instructions provided on the bottle's label.
THAT'S IT -- YOU'RE DONE!
This project is for personal use only and may be painted for fun or personal profit at craft shows. The painter may enlarge or reduce one photocopy for personal use only. Business or Commercial use of any portion of this pattern is prohibited unless written authorization is obtained from Yvonne Reeder of Via Von ~ Come Paint With Me. Reproduction for mass marketing by any means, including mechanical or electronic or digital is prohibited unless written authorization is obtained from Yvonne Reeder of Via Von ~ Come Paint With Me!™
