DIY Silver Metallic Coral Painting

I've been slowly updating our master bedroom, which had been neglected over the years. There was a watercolor hanging over our dresser that we purchased at an Art Show probably 25 years ago and it was really showing its age. The background of the painting was beginning to yellow and just didn't flow with the cool, crisp feel I was seeking. While I'm not going for a full on beach-y feel in our room, the cool blue/greens do lend themselves to that feel. And as we live withing walking distance of the ocean, it makes sense to have some link there. work it
I usually noodle ideas for a while until something speaks to me and images of coral spoke to me in this instance. This is an odd, narrow little area between 2 different shaped windows and I needed something with a little more height than width. I opted for 2 long narrow canvases as opposed to one big one.
Here's what I did:


I wanted to just barely tint the background of the canvas to the lightest shade of blue. In order to get a smooth flow of my paint, I primed the canvas with some leftover white acrylic paint, from painting cabinets in the home, in a satin sheen.
I used a wee bit of some existing acrylic paints in blue and green and mixed them with a good bit of water so that they were almost like a watercolor.
I brushed this very thinned acrylic 'glaze' over the acrylic white and then almost immediately wiped it off with a rag, given it just the lightest blue/green hue.
I searched the internet for coral images and found that elkhorn corals and staghorn corals fit into my image of what I was looking for. I sketched these images, very loosely and lightly, on my canvas. I wasn't going for scientific exactness...just representation. Truth time...on my first go round my family wasn't sure if they were looking at coral or a tree, so I painted over those, went back to the drawing board and refined what I was doing. I used a bottle of Americana Shimmering Silver Gloss Enamel Paint that I've had for a while. I painted with a 1/2 widebrush using very short, 1-2 inch strokes in most places with some longer ones here and there to give it some movement and texture.


Once done with the paintings, I used my silver sharpie and wrote the name of each coral on the canvas.
Lynn @ Nourish and Nestle
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