I painted these stripes and plan on adding the words “by the sea.” The stripes make me think bleached/weathered wood, beach, cabana. I was inspired by a small sign I have. I’m going to experiment with layouts and transparency on the computer. Once I have a layout, my plan is to print out the letters and make a stencil. I’ve never really painted letters before. I’m glad I can play on the computer before touching the canvas!

Here’s how I created my stripes.

• I used a ruler, to make sure the stripes were somewhat straight. First I added the base color of the stripe.
  
• While, the base color was still wet, I blended in a lot of white (to make it look bleached) and a little light brown (in streaks). I also added the a thin stripe of the light brown on the edges of the colored stripes.
  
• I made the stripes different widths. I wanted it to look like different sized slats of wood
  

Read Part II – Creating Stencils to add lettering to a canvas