In a fairly recent post you got to see the first stages of The Great Chalkboard Planet Adventure with my two nephews. These past two weeks we finished things up.
After the primer coat of flat, white latex/acrylic paint dried for a few days, we began with the chalkboard paint. We used the Rustoleum brand because it comes in a range of colors that get mixed at the point of purchase. Since Boy1 wanted dark red, I was able to ask the Paint Tech to change the color formula slightly. (Many thanks to Adam at Menards for this!)
Earlier this summer when working on a different project, I had tried a different brand - can't recall the name. I bought it at a local artist supply store. It came in a small, 8 oz. plastic canister and was a deep royal blue shade. As with our globes, I put down a primer coat first and then two of the chalkboard paint. It looked good, colorwise, but the surface was a little shiny and didn't take the chalk very well. Since then I've learned that there are numerous brands out there. I can't speak about them (and Rustoleum isn't paying me anything to talk them up here!).
The pics above show the globes after two coats of paint. The dark green paint seemed to have better coverage, though it was also a matter of how each boy applied their color.
We'd used brushes for the primer coat but switched to small foam rollers for coats 2 and 3 so that the surface would be as smooth as possible. Foam Pro was the brand. The fine-grained foam is often recommended by artists doing wall murals or trompe l'oeil creations.
For the final coat, we used both roller and brush. Each boy rolled the top half of the globe first. Then I used a brush to smooth out any heavy edges or line. Then, I held each boy's globe upside down for him while he paint-rolled the southern hemisphere. Finally, I smoothed those sections and did some gentle brush-smoothing along the equators to even out the two halves of paint.
Above you can see how much lighter the wet paint looks when being applied.
Here you can see how the paint begins to darken as it dries.
And here you can see what happens when one of the
artists leaned too close to his paint tray!
artists leaned too close to his paint tray!
The Planeteers re-create their pose from Day 1.
The final report on The Great Chalkboard Planet Adventure will be the next post (4 days from now).
