In regards to my personal art projects, I have been so overwhelmingly busy in the best way possible. I made a list of artistic endeavors for this summer, and so far, I’ve had so many other art projects that I have yet to scratch the surface of my personal list. It is exciting to be this busy, and I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve had the opportunity to do thus far. At least I can say with some confidence that I don’t think I’ll have time to finish my large 3D project anymore, but there’s always next summer. 

As I have stated and will continue to do so, I am terrible at taking before and after pictures, and I always get that shock of realization after I’ve completed most or all of the project. As such, there is a disappointing lack of ‘in-progress’ pictures for what I’ll be discussing, but I suppose it is a start to say that I have more than one picture to offer this time around (but it is quite literally only two pictures). 

To start, my grandparents have plastic lawn chairs that they really like, and the only thing that stopped them from using the chairs was the fact that they were covered in dirt and flaking paint. So the first thing I did was think of what I wanted to paint on them, and pitch the idea to my grandparents. They have about four smaller chairs that I have yet to tackle, but there was a larger plastic chair sitting in their backyard that I envisioned to be a watermelon once I finished painting it. Thankfully, they agreed and liked the idea, because I was extremely excited to paint a watermelon seat by that point.

It started off as a deep, faded green with specks of paint not flaking off, but certainly not sitting properly on the bench as paint should do- I can’t say I can explain it right. But that’s besides the point. After purchasing the paint necessary for the project, berry pink and spring green, I got to sanding the chair. That took forever, and only halfway through was I smart enough to use gloves, so I had green hands for quite a while when I worked my way through sanding the seat. Once I sanded it, I washed it down with simple green and water. After drying it off, I spray painted most of it green. 

The way in which I envisioned a watermelon on this chair was for the pink part to go on the seat (along with the black seeds). As such, to save paint, I neglected to paint the middle where I intended to paint pink, which thankfully worked out well. The paint needed time to dry fully, and it was about a week later that I was able to head back over to my grandparents house to do the rest of the seat. I covered the green area with a layer of painters tape so that it would create a crisp line, and I was able to get really nice, rounded corners for the watermelon. I spray painted the area pink, touched up the green where I needed to, and waited for it to dry so that I could paint the black seeds. After I had done that, all that was left was to seal the chair! I am very happy with how it turned out, considering I’ve never really painted furniture before (aside from the table I’m working on, but I’m treating that more like a canvas than anything). Below is the watermelon seat before I painted the black line separating the pink and green, and then beside it is the finished product.