Taking A Different Tact

For an artist, the canvas can be anything in a wide variety of surfaces. Sometimes, you come across an unexpected item that you have seen for years and never given any thought to.

Wandering Michael's recently I came across some sale items. One of the items that struck me were some wooden bird houses. They were round and seemed to have a smooth, relatively large surface that had many possibilities.

However, it is one thing to buy them and another to actually do something with them. I looked at them for awhile and finally decided that I would do one in the Pennsylvania Dutch design with lots of hearts I had been using on a wide variety of surfaces and another in the First American motif that I saw and liked in Alaska. 

As detailed as the heart birdhouse was to do, with its layers of color as a base and design, it was the Indian motif that was the hardest to create. It needed to be sketched, then outlined in pen (I used one of those fine point Sharpie's), then finally could be painted with acrylic paints. Each and every line should be precise and that demands very good light and a very steady hand.

This example is to show you that if we can think out of the box, that same blank canvas can be used in a wide variety of styles in an endless number of designs. 

Get out there and see what you can do!