Peace Sign on Reclaimed Wood Painting Tutorial

Peace Sign Painted on Reclaimed Wood

I started with a canvas of reclaimed wood. It was actually fence boards that I had Joe cut down to 24 inches. I used the same technique as we did for the British Flag to attach the 4 boards to each other. These boards did not require stain, they were all ready this weathered gray. I love painting on old cedar boards because they are really light weight and easy to hang.

I started by drawing a circle on the boards in pencil. I traced around a large bowl to achieve this. Then traced around a smaller bowl to create the inner circle. This gave me a rough idea of the lines, I don't really stay in the lines though, just come close.

I picked the brightest green acrylic craft paint I had for this painting because it is for my neon & peace sign loving daughter, Samantha. I used a large M. Grumbacher 10 bristle brush to paint most of it. It is one of my favorite brushes.  With the rough wood grain, it took some water and brushing in every direction to get full paint coverage.

Using an angle brush, I painted a kind of straight line down the center of the circle and filled it in with paint using the bristle brush to do the filling and the angle brush to make the lines straight. (Not perfectly straight by any means. It's art after all.)

I used my bristle brush for a guide as to where to put the remaining lines of the peace sign and painted the line using my angle brush. If you want to use tape here, that would be a good way to go about it. I just like to freehand things.

This is the finished painting. But it was way too fresh to go with the wood, so I decided it needed a little roughing up.

 So I took it outside and hit it lightly with my palm sander. I used a fine sand paper 100 grit. I didn't want to remove the patina of the wood or too much paint.

 Here is the final project. I will take one of it on her wall and update this post. This angle shows my sanding and some of the imperfections that make it personal. I think she will love it. What do you think?

Just a little note on my grandson Cylas. His eye surgery last month went really well and we are hoping that his glasses will be a thing of the past. We will find out in September. The surgery was to correct some muscle weakness behind his eye that let his eyes go crossed. It has made a huge difference so far. If he still needs glasses for his vision, that's OK too, cause they really are cute on him. Thank you for all the well wishes for his recovery!

Happy Painting!

Linking Up With: