Dear painting friends, we have a very special guest today!  Donna Dewberry, inventor of the popular One-Stroke painting technique, is here to answer a few questions about her work and creative life.  Here she is in our photo studio painting the step-by-step demos for her next book.


Q:  Donna, what exactly is One-Stroke painting?
A:  It’s a fast and easy way of painting where you blend, shade and highlight all in one stroke. You can do this simply by loading two or more colors on your brush at the same time. For instance, if I want to paint a green leaf, I load a darker green on one corner of my flat brush and a lighter green on the other corner. When I stroke a leaf shape, the darker green becomes the shaded side, and the light green becomes the highlight. The two colors blend softly together in the middle.

Q:  What’s the secret to painting the way you do?
A:  It’s all in how you load the brush.  When I see someone struggling, all I have to do is look at their brush. Inevitably, they do not have enough paint in the brush, or they have let the colors blend together too much on the brush. The secret is to load plenty of paint, and keep reloading often so your brush never drags or runs out of paint.

Q:  After loading the brush, what’s the next biggest mistake people make?
A:  They don’t keep the brush handle straight up and down. In One-Stroke painting, almost every stroke begins and ends on the chisel edge of the brush bristles, not the flat side. Then you press down hard on the brush as you stroke so the bristles visibly bend and release the paint.

Q:  What book are you working on now?
A:  It’s called “Donna Dewberry’s Essential One-Stroke Painting Reference” and the most exciting thing to me is that you can use it as a complete reference guide for almost any subject you want to paint, from trees and flowers to birds and fruit, from close-up details to full compositions. It has 160 pages of step-by-step photos and gorgeous finished paintings. You’re going to love it!  It will be out in February 2009 so be sure to look for it right here at the MyCraftivity Shop.

Q:  Where else can people find your painting?
A:  I have a how-to show on PBS television every week, and I’m on the Home Shopping Network every few months with special painting kits I design for beginners.

Q:  And finally, what kinds of crafts do you do besides painting?
A:  I love sewing, quilting, papercrafting, and making simple polymer clay projects. I always seem to find a way to work a little painting into some of these!  I also like to craft anything that helps people decorate for the holiday season.

Thanks, Donna!

Are any of you into batik? I have very limited experience with this medium. I’ve only made one batik and that’s been several years ago in an art class. But I really enjoyed the process and have wanted to make another one ever since.

For those of you who don’t know, batik is a form of decorating fabric that uses wax and dyes. You transfer an image or pattern on to a fabric then cover any areas where the original fabric color needs to be preserved with melted wax. I used the handles of old paint brushes to apply the wax. For fine lines you can use the tips of a stylus. The wax will peel off when it dries. When the wax dries in the fabric, you either dip the fabric in dye or use an old paint brush to add dye in limited areas. Once the dye dries you can cover it will wax and move on to other sections or dip the entire fabric in another color. The wax preserves the color beneath it and keeps the fresh dye out of that part of the fabric. It’s the same concept as masking film or masking fluid. When the dying process is finished, the wax is removed with heat. I used an old rag and a clothes iron to remove the wax from my batik. It can be a tedious process if you have an intricate pattern or design, but I was so pleased with the results that I didn’t mind the time it took to make. 

Jackie

Spring always makes me think of colors. When I started to write my blog today, I thought I would research new acrylic paint colors and share them with you. But then I remembered something one of the very talent artists/authors I’ve worked with said as she worked on a painting for her next book. She was sorting through the countless bottles of acrylic paint on the worktable looking for the color she need when she said, “I should just teach my students to mix their own colors. All of these premixed paints are just crutches.”

Oil painters and watercolor painters are pretty much forced to mix their own colors, but acrylic paints are available in a countless number of premixed colors. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using premixed colors. I use them almost exclusively. And I don’t think this artist would say using premixed colors makes a painting any less satisfying or important than one made without premixed paints.

I think she was lamenting that many decorative painters don’t learn color theory so they can mix their own colors, for whatever reason: it’s too intimidating, too time consuming, or just not as convenient. She wanted her students to have the full freedom to create anything they can imagine. And it’s a lot easier to do that if you know how to create the colors you picture in your mind instead of trying to find them already made in a bottle.

There are a number of great books that can make color theory accessible and fun to learn (Exploring Color by Nita Leland is just one example). There’s also nothing better than getting in there and mixing colors on your own, just to see what happens. I think an afternoon of just playing with paint and creating colors sounds like a great way to spend a rainy afternoon.    

Hi, painting friends!  Have you seen this week’s free project on the Painting + More site?  I’m really excited about this project – to give you a quick hint, it’s a faux-tile backsplash for a kitchen!  I’ve been looking forever for a beautiful yet inexpensive (okay, cheap!) way to add a backsplash over my stove without having to learn how to do tile work and buy all that stuff.

Lo and behold, Curtis Heuser, author of the book shown in the free project, "Your Home: A Living Canvas", has solved my problem. Turns out that you can easily create faux tiles that look so real you want to touch them to find out. They have a warm, rustic, Tuscan-kitchen look because you use joint compound instead of actual tiles, and when it dries, you paint it with a color wash. If you want a more decorative look, you can paint a design on your “backsplash” using regular latex housepaint.

On some of the home renovation shows on HGTV, they may use expensive, custom-made tiles for kitchen backsplashes, and while the tiles are unique and lovely to look at, I often wonder how they’ll hold up after 20 years of grease splatters and flying spaghetti sauce!

Have any of you created your own faux-tile work for your home?  Or have you found an interesting surface to use as a backsplash?  We would love to hear about it!  

Update: The  soft crafts forum on the messageboard has been moved to the Sewing and Fashion section. Plushies is the first topic in this forum. If you know and love plushies, you can connect with other crafters who share this interest through this forum. If plushies are new to you, here’s a quick introduction:

Plushies are funky stuffed creatures that are as fun to make as they are to own. They can be cute, crazy or crude, and they are always creative. Basically, you use fabric, needle, thread and batting (stuffing material) to bring the colorful characters living in you head to life. You also can incorporate knitting or crochet into your plushie.

You can check out a wealth of plushie information in Plush You! by Kristen Rask. The book also has a blog that’s totally worth checking out. 

Jackie