Love Sign and Shadowing Trick

If you are new to the paint series this is day 15 of 31 days of the Power of Paint. If you'd like to see the entire series click  HERE.

Shadowing Trick and "Love" Sign

This project began with a simple piece of scrap wood.

I painted it black using acrylic craft paint, making sure to cover the plywood edges.

I mixed a white acrylic in with my leftover black from the base coat to make this gray and painted it roughly with a foam brush, making sure I didn't cover it completely.

I free handed the word LOVE on board after the gray paint dried. {TIP: I actually "painted" it using a brush loaded with only water until I got the look I wanted then went over it with paint.} You could use stencils or the vinyl letter technique I used on my Fall Welcome Sign if you aren't comfortable with freehand.  

To shadow the letters, I chose a pearl white paint by Martha Stewart and a 1/2" angle brush. I also use a slick surface as a pallet, like this plate above. Use a pretty moist brush (I always have a jar of water near by) and dip just the top half of the angle brush into the paint.

I used my yellow paint as a guide for my shadow, I use the half of the brush with no paint to go right over the yellow, while the paint side touches the outside edge to form the shadow.

Here I used yellow paint for an example and practiced on my craft paper that covers my table. The less paint you load the smaller the shadow. I practice this a lot on my craft paper or pallet to make sure I have the desired amount of paint loaded on my brush.

You can do this to paint 2 colors at once, here I loaded half my brush in yellow and half in the white pearl. 

This was a hard tutorial to write. I hope I explained it well enough. I suggest practicing it a few times first. If you have any questions, feel free to email or comment me.