Milk Paint on board 16" X 18"



In 2006 I spent 10 days in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest at a shaman's family compound, participating in Ceremony with medicina. The figure of the mother and child is inspired from a sketch I did at the time.

This is the first time I've painted on wood. I tried using milk paint before on paper and on cardboard but it goes on thickly and the work ends up curling all around the edges.

I acquired a lot of wooden boards from someone who is moving and wanted to get rid of them. I thought they'd be perfect for milk paint. Milk paint is a non-toxic, environmentally friendly paint that needs a porous surface. It's usually used to restore old furniture and can also be painted on walls.

I sanded all of the surfaces of the board using "rough" sandpaper so the milk paint would adhere better. This sounded like a good idea but it made the painting difficult to do as the surface of the wood was pockmarked with dings and I didn't sand them out.

I thought at first to prime the board and paint the whole thing white before painting the figure, but decided I liked the look of the grain of the wood. There are four layers of milk paint for the figure: two undercoats of white, two overcoats of blue, then the black lines around. The painting ended up looking very rustic , like folk art.



Milk Paint: http://www.realmilkpaint.com/products.html


More Eco-Art using reused materials:

http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=1836008 
"Eco-MaGs by mayah" --homemade refrigerator magnets

http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=1783684
"Petroleum Hive"

http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=1777065
More "Plastics"!

http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=1767451
"Chaos Theory"

http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=1449803
Art from nature/biodegradable containers

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