A Long Month

Just like everyone else, the groundhog day like tone of the last month has been bizarre. I’ve had the added element of literally redoing the same thing everyday at work. I started the month making the session 2 video in my milk paint series on saturated colors. After it was all done, which has entailed a lot of hours learning about editing software, sound equipment and videography, I had a revelation about the process that I couldn’t resist sharing and decided to reshoot the entire video!

One thing that I’ve learned from my book writing experience is that one must put every effort forward to make sure the info that you put out is the the best you can do. So basically I’ve spent every day of the last month painting a chair blue! Now that the video is done and up on Vimeo, I’m going to treat myself to some chair making, experimentation and maybe even a few days of play.

You can click here to get to the page on Vimeo.

So what is so important that I’d scrap two weeks of work? Basically it’s about mixing the paint. As anyone who has used milk paint knows, it can be a full of surprises and in my own work, I’ve spent years trying to tame them to find the variables that send it to one result over another. My goal, which is to get a thin saturated color, can be challenging as some colors don’t cover as well as others. So I purposefully chose a color that is naturally translucent, Deep Sapphire by the Real milk paint company. Besides the tough learning curves, I’ve been enjoying the process of making videos and soon, I hope to make them about woodworking, which I think we can all agree is the real fun part. But finish is what we see first and sets the tone for a piece so I am very happy to have this episode in the can. I will be making another video on layering colors for a variety of effects as the last (?) session in the series.

I appreciate the support and feedback that I’ve been getting and am looking forward to doing more.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to share their concern for my health, rest assured, I am fine, I’ve had an auto immune disease since I was a teenager which means I take medication to disable my immune response. Luckily I’m thriving but it does mean that I will have to take extra care to stay away from the current pathogen.

I hope that you thriving and taking the time to make a little something when you can.

Pete

Update

I hope that everyone is healthy and handling the situation well. I’m focusing on finishing my video series on Milk Paint and doing some chair work.

I have been receiving lots of emails about future classes so I thought it worth laying out my thoughts and plans here. I am currently suspending planning on future classes until I know what it will take to accommodate the students who have had to defer the classes during the spring. Obviously I cannot predict how many enrolled students will lose their class dates and need to reschedule.

On a personal note, I have some health concerns that cause me to take medication to suppress my immune system and I could end up being one of those folks for whom it is unwise to break isolation for some time. So basically, uncertainty is plan!

Thanks for bearing with me and supporting my efforts in the video work, I will get back to hosting classes again, hopefully soon,

Pete

New Milk Paint Video!!

Like everyone else, I’ve been holed up lately and I decided to use the time to make a long overdue video on using Milk Paint. I have uploaded the first part of this two part series to Vimeo.com where you can buy the set and stream part one now! Part one covers all the basic info as well as complete instruction on my technique for painting black over red. I hope that this is helpful, I enjoyed making it and am looking forward to getting some feedback so part two can be even better. Click here to go directly to the Vimeo page!