Birth Sign Bambi (2014)

Last Friday my niece gave birth to a lovely little girl named "Milou"

When she was about 7 moths pregnant she had asked me if I was able to make a birth sign for her to put in the yard when the baby was born (It's tradition here in The Netherlands to do such a thing when a child is born)

Final result of the sign. The name can be removed and hang in the room of the child.

I thought it was a great idea so she send me a picture of Bambi with his mother and a picture of the skunk with flowers. She asked if it was possible to use the flowers from the skunk picture and use them with the picture of Bambi and his mother.

Bambi and his mother

The skunk from Bambi with flowers.

Sure, no problem.
I've used Photoshop to create a new image.

The result of Photoshop

Now it was time to convert it to a wooded board.
I've used birch plywood. This is very light and it's nice and smooth on the surface. I took a piece that was 1,22 m width.

The board was first soaked with a wet cloth. Just enough to color the surface. This way the top fibers will soak up the water and swell, making it easier to smooth the surface later on with sanding.

When it's sanded it got 2 layers of white primer. This was sanded again and it was time to do some drawing.

The pencil drawing on the board.

When I was satisfied with the drawing I used a jig saw to cut out the whole piece.

Once the board was sawn it looked like this.

With things like plywood you will always end up with some torn edges. Most of them are shallow and disappear when sanded, others can be filled up with a small bit of filler.

Now it was time to paint.
I don't have a million cans of different tones of color. So most of them needed to be blended (?) by hand. I mostly used some prior tones like: yellow, blue, red, black and white. But for this project I also got bright pink  (white + red have a tendency to turn more of a salmon tone of pink + with blue it makes a perfect purple) and a mustard type of brown.

Most of the basic paint job done.

When all the colors had been done twice it was time to add the black linings. I used a special kind of brush for this; those small ones with long hairs used for nail art.

Added black linings.

  The sides were painted black too. I also painted the bolts that were needed to fix the board to the pole.