Painted Furniture: garden benches

Last Friday I went thrift shopping. Here are two of the three benches I found.

I brought them into the studio and began. They were scrubbed and prepared with three coats of white primer/sealer. Then I covered them with black latex and drew into the wet paint with a Pink Pearl eraser spontaneously letting design begin to form.

Next came a series of glazes using Golden Acrylics and Matte Medium. Again drawing into the wet paint with the eraser to bring up the form and a sense of movement.

Finally the details were applied making the 3 pieces part of my current 'Bird watching' series.

I kept them simple as I have a gallery that is waiting for them. The bases are left white and they are sealed with Minwax Polycrylic making them suited for indoors or out.

Hand Painted Furniture

I bought three benches at the thrift store last week and have been giving them a new life. I believe I'll have them ready to post, in their varying stages, within the next few days.

In the meantime I walked around the house and snapped a few of the pieces that I did when I owned my gallery. The 'Water table' is a farm auction find made of wide, mismatched planks. I cut the legs down to make it a coffee table height and have used it in that fashion ever since.

The bench is a theatre seat that folds flat for storage...a fabulous design and so incredibly comfortable one could even fall asleep during a boring performance. I had about 7 of them and painted and sold them all keeping this one, that I painted with my fingerprints, as part of my collection. I still have one more unpainted one in storage and one day...

The little hall table is one of many, and during the time I was doing these lizards and frogs just kept leaping onto the surface.