Gourd Painting Part 2-

It is really cold outside today.  For the last two days we have had single digit temperatures.  I'm glad that it is not a day I have to go out to take a picture of the field.  Despite the cold temperatures, I still went out to go to the grocery store.  Other than that, I have spent time getting the gourds sealed with the acrylic varnish so I could start painting them.  I have just begun to get the first coat of paint on the gourds.  I had only finished about half of each of three gourds before I had to stop to get on with the shopping, so the first coat is not complete yet.  Sometimes it seems hardly worth the effort to start something when you only have a few minutes, but life is busy.  If I only have fifteen or twenty minutes to work on something I try to go ahead and get started.  Numerous twenty minute segments eventually add up to hours of work on the project.

As I blogged last time, I want to paint these gourds to look like gourds.  When they were purchased fresh, they were brilliantly colored in hues of green, yellow, orange, and red.  Once dried, they changed to an brownish orange color.  My plan is to use these dried gourds in decorative baskets during Halloween and Thanksgiving.  So instead of painting them with designs, I am painting them to look like they looked when they were fresh.  I'll save adding decoration to gourds for a future project.

Before getting started, I read different forums around the web and watched some tutorials on decorating gourds before getting started.  Since then, I have sealed the gourds and have just begun starting the painting process.  So, now I am at the experimental stage.  I always like to try to find out an answer to something while I am doing a project.  During my reading of various forums, I found that some people primed with gesso before  painting the gourds and others did not.  Also, some people used tube type acrylics and others used the more liquid craft paints.  I decided to check out the various options for myself to see which I thought worked best for my intentions for these gourds.

I decided to experiment with three gourds.  One gourd would have a base coat of gesso before painting to see if  the paint would hold to the gourd better.  Another gourds would just receive a base coat of a student grade acrylic tube paint.  The third gourd would be painted with acrylic craft paint.  From there I could make decisions on how to proceed with the other gourds.

This is what I have observed from the little bit of painting that has been completed.  The gourd painted with green tube type paint is a little streaky.  It will definitely need a second coat.  Also, the thicker paint was a little hard to scrub in between the bumps on the gourd.  The orange paint on the second gourd is acrylic craft paint.  It seems a little chalky.  I'm wondering if a second coat would help the chalky look or whether it might look better after the final coat of varnish is on it.  I have a coat of gesso on the third gourd, but that is about as far as I have had time to work with it.

So that is about where things stand right now.  More on painting the gourds at the next blog post.