Let's Paint a Spring Garden Sign

>

Welcome and Happy Spring

Since Spring has "officially" arrived I thought it would be fun to look for some Spring inspiration in my garden to find something simple for beginners for us to paint together. Let's take a stroll with my studio assistant, Bentley, and see what we can find.

Finding Inspiration . . . . .

Here . . . . .

There . . . . .

Everywhere . . . . . .

"I think we are getting close to finding something simple to paint"!

"I think I found our inspiration"



"Let's paint a garden rabbit"


Now that we found our inspiration, let's paint a Welcome Garden sign with a garden rabbit. First step is to base coat your canvas (I use an 8X10 canvas) or you can paint on a wooden board or pre made sign form you can purchase from Michael's, Joanne's or most craft stores. After base coating my canvas I drew a very simple rabbit and lettering for my sign. You can stencil the letters or draw them free hand. Tip - I used a fabric marker to paint my sign - the markers have tips like a pen and are very easy to use and work great on canvas. Do not use a Sharpie as the color will run.

We are going to paint a very simple rabbit - first draw a circle and then add a little head and ears and eyes. Our rabbit is going to be sitting in a flower bed surrounded by flowers - no need to draw legs or feet - we are going to keep the drawing very simple for beginners.



My rabbit is going to be white with gray accents. You can paint yours any color you want. Since I am painting a white rabbit, I first base coat the body with blue violet. This give me a nice base to build the white body on.
Next sketch the flowers - my front door is red and I choose to have my rabbit sitting in a bed of red geraniums. You can paint any color flowers you want - perhaps yellow or white daisy's, pink geraniums - pick colors that go with your front door and garden. Notice I put in the darks first around the flowers.







I painted in the white and gray and painted an almond shape eye. I mixed a little black and white to make the gray and added a little brown for highlights.









I completed the red geraniums - painting from dark to light and put some highlights on the geraniums by adding a little yellow to the red, and added a little nose and a dot of white in the eye -next I painted a few whiskers. I always seal my paintings on canvas with a coat of clear water based varnish - if the painting is hung outside I use 3 coats of varnish.










I like to compare the completed painting with the inspiration flowers for color and form.


The last step is to add screw hooks on the back of the canvas and add a black and white check ribbon.




Here is the completed Spring garden sign hanging on my front door.

Thank you for visiting my blog. I love hearing from you and it means so much to me that you have taken time to leave me comments and follow my blog. If you have any questions or would like to see me paint something special, please leave me a comment or send me an e-mail. Have a lovely week. Blessings, Erin