By Kerry Trout

Jacquelin Vanderwood

September 15, 2002

This book is about technique more than anything else but the ideas are great. Who would have thought you could do so much with painting mini murals. Kerry Trout covers supplies you'll need, tips, how to paint each step along the way, projects galore to choose from. Her ideas cover everything from painting on window shades to decorating hat boxes, creating a trompe l'oeil cat sitting on a door frame, to creating a realistic looking clock on the face of a door, and much more. Each project comes with a pattern.

In the Materials chapter, chapter one, you'll find out about general supplies, brushes, paints, liquid shadow, and general tips.

In Chapter two, the project chapter, you'll learn techniques about floating, damp blending, making a wash, drybrushing, comma strokes, pulled petals, double loading, pulled leaf stroke, what's a touch, stippling, thinning paint, using your rake brush, and using your liner brush. The first project is a bunny triptych. She informs you about the materials needed and the paints you'll need. Subsequently, you'll have a pattern with which to trace from. You'll learn to paint terra cotta pots on wood, and a garden hose and trowel, plus rust and a lop-eared bunny and a Dutch bunny. You'll also learn to paint the ground, a hose and it's coupling, and a seed packet. In addition, you'll learn shadowing and finishing off by painting on the front panel. In project two you'll learn how to create a trompe l'oeil window shade and how to prepare the background, plus creating distant foliage, geraniums, and pulled leaves. You'll add a hummingbird and mullons and a handle, then you'll learn how to finish. In project three Kerry will teach you the art of decorating a schoolhouse notebook and how to apply a background and trees plus shrubbery, a fence and grass, and then the schoolhouse with windows panes, a door, steps and bushes. You'll learn how to add a path to the scene and also a flagpole and apple trees, then decorate with leaves and apples, then add lettering, and the final touches. In project four you'll learn how to decorate a goldfinch frame (as shown below) with stippling, adding leaves, thistles, the goldfinch, eyes and beak, tail, wings, and legs, the nest and eggs, and flowers and how to finish it off.

Project five shows you how to paint a covered bridge box that has a landscape scene with an old fashioned bridge, how to paint water and a road, plus how to lay the foundation and paint grass and daisies, create a gold border and staining. Project six is a mountain view lodge hat rack and shelf. You'll learn to prepare the surface of the wood, paint the sky and mountains, snow and pine trees, the lodge, the walls and windows, add a foreground, some grass and a porch, varnishing and antiquing. Project seven is a Tuscany hat box. You'll paint columns and Italian stucco plus niches with flowers, how to sculpt under the niche and a decoration frieze, apply a landscape and add an urn, then add irises and finish it.  Project eight is a trompe l'oeil cat. You'll learn how to place an undercoat, a basecoat and fur, define the fur and face and the eyes, paint legs and tail. Project nine is the shaker clock. She'll teach you how to paint the clock base and an escutcheon, the mouse, the clock face with roses and morning glories, and the details of the face, then finish off the face with lettering and numbers, how to paint spindles, then finish off the piece. Project ten covers the trompe l'oeil wall shelf (pictured on the cover of the book). You'll discover how to trace and apply a base coating, shadows, the plate with flowers and laurel trim, a bottle with stems inside adorned with forsythia petals, a couple of lemons on the shelf, the actual shelf and a doily to decorate it.  

This is a really great and informative book if you are interested in livening up your abode, or better yet making it a paying hobby. You'll definitely learn a lot.

Copyright 2002, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved