Friday, March 19, 2010

Friday Egg Pot

Pysanka style flower pot


Wha?

Yup. I was asked to donate a terra cotta pot painted in the style of my artwork to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden for their annual Garden Party fundraiser. Quite an honor for me and I was happy to oblige. Let me just say that compared to an egg, a terra cotta pot is HUUUUUUUGE. It took a lot longer than I planned for just because there was so much more ground to cover. I started by painting the pot white with matte acrylic paint. For the eternity band around the top, I eyeballed itand made tic marks with a pencil, but they were all off and not even in the slightest so I had to resort to cutting a piece of string that was the exact diameter of the pot, then marking halfway then half of that, then half of that, until my string had marks every 2 inches or so. I used that as a guide and it worked much better than my eyeball!

Pysanka style flower pot

Of course, instead of wax and dye, I used paint pens and sharpies. The black outlines were done with a very fine line black paint pen and I filled in with mainly different colors of paint pens, though there are some areas where I used sharpies in different colors.  I used stylized animal images for the body of the pot: a blue elephant,

Pysanka style flower pot

yellow deer,

Pysanka style flower pot


red ram,

Pysanka style flower pot


and orange peacock.

Pysanka style flower pot


Finally, I painted the inside of the pot with gold paint just to make it more finished looking:

Pysanka style flower pot


I coated it with Krylon Triple Thick Clear Glaze which really helped to bring it all together. Amazing what a little shine will do.

If you like it, you are most welcome to bid on it at the Garden Party auction. Check out the Umlauf website for tickets to the event!