The First of the Painted Boxes

Painted tea box.

As I had blogged recently, I have started to experiment with painting boxes.  I had seen an article in GreenCrafts magazine in which someone had started painting boxes to use as gift boxes.  The idea intrigued me because it gives me an opportunity to learn to paint as well as recycling materials into a useful object; in this case a box to use when giving someone a gift.

I am more of a crafter than a painter, but I would like to learn to paint better than I do.  I guess at the moment you could say I am an impressionistic painter.  I get the impression that I am not very good at it.  (Pardon the pun.)    However, the only way to get better at painting is to paint frequently, so I'm giving it my best shot. 

I once read an article somewhere, ( I can't remember where) that a particular artist used to throw his canvas on the ground and walk all over it before starting to paint.  He did this because a blank canvas without a mark on it was so disconcerting that he had trouble starting a painting.  I can totally relate to that.  I stared at the blank box for two days before I said to myself, "Pick a subject, pick up a paintbrush and get started."  Then I did.

To recap from the first blog on painted boxes, I picked three boxes from the assorted boxes left over from products in the kitchen.  They were a tea box, a cracker box, and a box that held disposable cups.  They just happened to be the first boxes that came along when I started the project.  The boxes were different weights of cardboard, which also allows me to experiment to find out if one weight of cardboard is better than another.  I painted each box with Gesso.  Even two coats of Gesso were not enough to cover the printing on the boxes completely.  I had to paint the boxes with Titanium White in order to blank out the box completely.  I am using acrylic paints: artist's paints not craft paints.  Most of the paints are Liquitex, but some are Windsor & Newton.

The result is my painting, "Storm Breaking Up at Sunset".  The painting is on the top panel.  The bottom and side panels are just muddled in.  Actually, only the bottom and part of the sides are painted at this point.  When I started I was not sure whether I wanted to continue the painting along the sides or not.  At this point, since it is only an experiment, I think I will just muddle in all the sides.  But, if I wanted to continue the painting, I could.

My conclusion so far is that the tea box was a little flimsy, but that did not pose any real difficulty in painting it.  One of the inner flaps did rip a bit while I was holding it while painting.  A sturdier box might be a better investment of time.  I guess it depends on what size you need for the gift.