The Grapes Plate

THE GRAPES PLATE

"Back in July, my nutritionist asked me to paint some grapes for her new office. She has been so kind to our family that I made that a priority.



"My medium this time was acrylics. I didn’t seem to have any appropriate brushes for the job, so I bought two new ones. I thought grapes would be easy. Ha! I tried several times, but I couldn’t make those two brushes attain the effect I wanted. I got discouraged and avoided the project. I felt guilty every time I walked past my painting table and refused to paint anything else until I got that done. My paint dried out. I kept telling myself I needed to get it done. I mixed more paint and sat back down and made myself paint. Still I wasn’t satisfied with those two brushes. Finally, I dug out an old brush of unknown parentage that I had rejected earlier without even trying it. It worked. From that point, the project progressed rapidly.





"My canvas was a re-cycled wooden plate. Here’s how I got that one. When we need boxes for our de-cluttering projects, we cruise the McKinney square. At the end of the weekday, businesses put their trash out at the curb. If you get there before the sanitation trucks, you can get some nice boxes. Sometimes there is "treasure" in them. This past summer, David found such a treasure in one of the boxes he picked up. There were five or six painted wooden plates. When I saw them, I knew I had what I needed for the grapes job.
"I had my son, Caleb, sand one down to the wood. I applied a base coat and then painted the grapes and other details.

"I worked so intensely on the painting that – toward the end - when I rinsed my brush between colors, I snapped the handle half-way down while blotting the bristles on the rag. I was almost done, so I grabbed the nub of a handle and kept painting. A few minutes later, I snapped off the handle again next to the ferrule (the metal band that holds the brush hairs to the handle.) Okay then. I guess that was that!

"I finished the job two weeks ago and had Caleb spray on an acrylic coating for me. We delivered it to my nutritionist on Monday, December 21st. * Sigh * Finally done!"

"Maybe I’ll paint more grapes – now that I know how to do it and I have all those plates. Just in case, I bought another brush just like the one I demolished. (Grins.)"
Soli Deo Gloria,
Julia

All photos are the property of Julia A. Kautt, Copyright 2009.