"Can you paint my Nana's mirror? It's sitting in the basement and I'd love for it to be hanging over my mantle...but it's an ugly gold color - and I want it repainted white...like a beach cottage look...can you do that?"
"ABSOLUTELY".
Its like cheating! I just have to slap some paint on a frame - no landscapes...no shading...no light perspective...just a few coats of paint! Woohoo! This was my thought...before my eyes were crossing and spending hours getting the details just right.
Beautiful mirror - but it was painted in an antiqued gold. Not sure how "antique" the actual mirror is -but the gold finish was the kind that was sort of "feaux finished"...gold with black speckling to make it look old. God, I really need to brush up on my design terms...I'm sure there is a term for that lame description I just offered as if I were in frigging middle school.
Kathleen asked that I paint it white...and accent it with a sage green and a sky blue. She wanted the white base to look washed out and weathered...like something in an ocean cottage. She used a fancy design term I can't recall....again, I should really brush up on my lingo. What kind of artist am I if I can't talk the talk?!!! A dumb one I suppose - oh well. The art still happens even if I don't know what the hell to call it. Who the hell cares. But I digress...
I was about to surrender and simply let her know that I couldn't figure out how to give it that "weathered look"...and then the planets aligned. I figured it out by accident.
I had painted a base coat of an off-white..thinking it would match color of the mantle it would be hanging above. I brought that color and a more pure white to her house to make sure...and I was wrong...the mantle was pure white. So I put a coat of white over the off-white...and noticed in a brush stroke that I was able to make the appearance of the washed out beach cottage look. Dried off the brush a little and dragged it over the coat of white...and VIOLA...just what she asked for!
Meanwhile - she wanted the blue and green included somehow. There were 2 beveled areas that would be perfect for painting those accent colors. Perfect...but a total pain in the ass!!! I tried using tape to help me get the lines clean...no dice - it peeled off the white paint. I had to cut in the colors manually...with a TINY little brush...a fraction of an inch at a time. Two coats. I kept thinking the whole time...I wonder how much I would be charging for this piece if I were getting paid? I'd say about 10-12 hours went into painting that frame! However...and I'm not sure why, because it's so damn time consuming and detailed and meticulous...I LOVE doing it. It was such therapy to make sure those lines were nice and clean...and to have the satisfaction of knowing they were so clean that the viewer would never even be able to appreciate how frigging HARD it is to get it that way.
It came out great - I'm very pleased...and very excited to give it to her today. And not for nothing I'm psyched I'm able to give her EXACTLY what she wanted, that's absolutely priceless to her...and it didn't cost a dime.
As I assumed - the picture doesn't really do justice to the "cottagey finish", or what it took to get those accents on the beveling.
