A Labour of Love

At last - my painting has come to an end and it has been a long journey, which has lasted all through the winter. It became more exciting towards the end when the pace quickened to get it finished.There has been more thought put into the design of this can than anything else I have painted so far, mainly because it is the one that will be on show, but also because there was such a large area to cover and I needed to vary the design in each individual section so as not to be too repetitive, hence the orange lily on the spout as a last resort for something suitable to fit in the space.

I began with the three castle scenes (there is one inside the lid), as I thought these would be the most challenging. A few hours watching Phil Speight and Tony Lewery videos once again, regained my confidence with the castles, but there was a fair amount of white spirit and tissue required to rub out and try again and this can only be used when the background  paint is dry, thereby taking a lot longer than the practised professionals.

I bought four sign writers' lining brushes a while ago, knowing that I could use them on the can and it took some courage to try one out when it was loaded with paint, but I surprised myself by how easy it was to do and the paint seemed to last forever before it thinned out. The brush seems to run on rails however much your hand shakes! Watch it done on You Tube and you would think "I could never do that!" but you can.

I had never tried any sign writing before and this presented problems that caused some concern over what font to use and where I could find exemplars. Brighton Public Library came up with very little information, so it was back to the internet and there was considerable material to be found, mostly on boat sign writers' web sites and You Tube. I had also started taking photographs of suitable sign written boats on my travels, so I was building up quite a library of material. The original font used on the stern of Stronghold was the basis of the chosen font, which went on reasonably well, but the drop shadow took several abortive attempts before getting a satisfactory result. Similarly with the scrolls at each end - all rather frustrating, but I got there in the end and am pleased with the result.