Relief Wood Carving Canada Goose Project Part Four

In this second lesson for how-to high relief carve and wood burn a Flying Canada Goose free project we will focus on how to color your wood carving projects using acrylic craft paints, including primer coats, dry brushing, and using an oil stain on basswood.

Step 52: Ready to paint

I am using acrylic craft paints, synthetic brushes, and a glass tile for a palette during these steps. You will also need sanding sealer, 320-grit sandpaper, latex gloves, a soft antiquing cloth, linseed oil, turpentine, and burnt umber or raw umber oil paint.

Before I paint a basswood plaque I brush two thin coats of sanding sealer to the entire piece. Follow the directions on your can. Allow the sealer to dry well, about two hours, then lightly sand the work with a very fine grit sandpaper. Remove any sanding dust with a clean cloth. Sanding sealer keeps the basswood from over absorbing the colors that we will be using as well as sealing the end grain cuts that can become darker during painting than the straight grain cuts.

As you work your coloring, because we created deep undercuts all along the body of the goose you can cut and tuck a piece of manila folder into those undercuts to protect your background from the paint. My photo sample shows a blue folder … but that is just so you can see the folder tucked in the undercut. The manila folder that I really used did not show up because it was the same color as the basswood background. Grin.

On a glass palette place a small amount of each of the colors listed in our supply list. About a quarter coin size puddle will get you started.

Mix an equal amount of titanium white, dark brown, and medium yellow on the tile. Do not mix this well – lightly mix so that your color puddle has some areas of dark mix, some medium mix, and some light mix.

Lightly dampen a large synthetic or ox hair brush with clean water, tap the tip of the brush on a paper towel to get rid of any drops. Pick up a small amount of color mix on your brush tip and begin coating the front and back wing of the goose.

This is a thin, watery coating that will have a wide variety of colors and shades when applied. Please take time to look at the photos before you touch color to wood. You can see that this coating does not completely cover the wood burning strokes, nor is it an even uniform color.

The cattail leaves are coated with a water thinned mixture of medium yellow and yellow ocher, the cattail sticks are coated with white, and the cattails have one coating of dark brown.

The head marking, top of the neck just above the shoulder and the belly have one water thinned coat of white. The head, legs, and feet are done with one coat of Paynes grey.

Let this first water thinned coating dry well.

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