This happy accident started with an old painted canvas that I had inherited from an unknow relative (isn't that just weird? Someone you've never met in your entire life dies and you, for whatever reason, get a random object they owned?😂). They had painted some sort of half hazard abstract work on it that just never appealed to me (or, apparently, anyone else I'm related to😂). So, I decided to recycle the canvas and give it a new life!
After sanding down the entire canvas and wiping it down, I randomly got the idea to put a layer of white house paint over top of it as a primer. Now, I'd never done this before so I had no idea what to expect. Well, I can say that if this is the typical reaction using house paint has on canvas, it's a neat reaction for sure. As the paint dried, it started to crack ALOT almost as if I had used crackle texture medium/paint instead! It instantly put me in mind of a dried lake/river bed during a drought. I instantly liked it and became flooded with different ideas on what to make with it! And, of course, that's not always a good thing😂. I couldn't pick one that felt just right, you know?
After some time, I had moved and was decorating my new place with my other works. When I noticed that I had displayed all of my Jurassic Park related art together, but ended up leaving a sizeable gap amongst them, that's when it hit me. The logo of the novel, movie AND park for Jurassic Park is the profile of a T-Rex skull! Wouldn't it be cool to half a faux rex fossil looking like it's being dug out of the dirt? Uh, yes please!😂 So that's what I set out to do, make my own T-rex fossil coming out of a dried lake bed. Below are the steps on how I started my process.
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From the left, I started with the outline of the skull. I used charcoal so that I could be sure to see what I was doing😂. Once the outline was done and to scale, I sculpted the teeth using polymer clay. I used a tooth brush and clay tools to give them texture like you'd find in real fossilized teeth. Next I used folded aluminum foil to create the depth of the skull and glued the strips in the shape of the skull. Folded lengthwise I was able to snake the long strips and tried to leave few gaps in between the sections.. This was also when I glued the hardened teeth to the canvas.
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Once the aluminum strips were glued in place, I stuffed cotton balls in-between the strips and overtop of them to give the raised areas and rounded edges you'd see on a real skull. Once the cotton was secured, I used more foil to cover the cotton so as to provide a better surface for the wall spackle (seen in pink when wet) to adhere to. This provided a good fossil-like texture once it was dried. I also added a couple of "rocks" on the corners just for fun😂.
To get that dried sandy lake bed look, I decided to spray paint the entire thing yellow. This helped with the base coat, especially for inside the cracks themselves. I then used sand and coffee colored acrylic paints by Apple Barrel for the final coat. For the Fossil and the rocks themselves, I used FolkArt color shifting paint over top and on the sides using a small sponge to retain the believable texture and not have brush marks.
The finished piece after spraying it with a UV protective spray and hanging up on my wall😂.
The short showcase clip is just to show off the depth of the work as well as giving you a glimpse at how the color shift paints look. Sorry for the yucky quality!😂
Well MMP Fans, I hope you enjoyed learning how I made this 3D monster-saurus and are more than a little interested in making your own 3D painting! If you do try out this technique, or even make some dino inspired works of your own, be sure and tag me on social media so I can see YOUR creations! And please feel free to let me know YOUR thoughts on this piece/medium. If you would like to challenge me, please check out my Contact Me page, or, if you'd like to purchase one of my works or a work of your own design, check out my Commission page.
Till next time MMP fans!