After a two-and-a-half hour drive to Bridgton, Maine on Thursday, which took us over some of the most beautiful roads in New Hampshire, I met with my Advanced Floorcloth class for the afternoon. The six students came from as far away as Georgia and Maryland. It was an intense day and a half, but everyone went away with a beautiful Rufus Porter-esque landscape design painted on a 2′ X 3′ floorcloth.

The class was a part of the “Cultural Heritage Series” of classes put on by the Rufus Porter Museum. Basically, all kinds of very cool sessions covering everything old from Waddle Fence Building to Soap Making to Floorcloth Painting, held during the week of July 7- 12. They do this every year, so check it out next year by going to the Rufus Porter Musuem site. On Thursday I instructed the class on how to apply a gradient wash for the sky and how to create perspective with the use of colors, so that their mountains appeared distant and the hills in the foreground were closer.
Friday morning we were right back to work, painting houses, shrubs and trees.
During our lunch break we got a special treat and went downtown to the Museum’s Annex and saw the “Westwood Murals”. We got to see the actual mural that we were studying and painting for the class. What a blast!
We all went back to work that afternoon all inspired to make floorcloths as beautiful as Porter’s original wall paintings.

The afternoon whipped past us and everyone got most of their paintings finished. The faux graining for the “frames” got a little hurried, but the end results were amazing! Everyone did a afantastic job and it was a wonderful group to work with.

They’re all encouraging me to do more classes, and I must say, this one was REALLY fun. I’ll see what I can do.

Right now I’m thinking I need to get some murals on my living/dining room walls for the Open House on October 3rd and 4th. Of course that’s after I paint the new floorcloth for the dining area and another one for the kitchen sink… Then I’m thinking painted risers for the stairs. Ugh! See what a little inspiration does to me?

Thanks, ladies, for a wonderful couple of days in Maine! And a special thank you to Nancy Smoak for inviting me to teach this class.

Tomorrow I’m off to Bridgton, Maine to teach an Advanced Floorcloth Painting Class at the Rufus Porter Museum. The car is loaded up and we’ll head over in the morning for the day and a half class. I love Rufus Porter’s work, so I’ll be like a kid in a candy shop! I may have trouble focusing on the teaching part, but I’ll try. The participants will be painting a 2′ X 3′ floorcloth using several of the techniques that Rufus Porter would have used to paint his murals.

They’ll go from a  painted blank canvas like this:

To in between steps like these:

and:

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To a finished painting like this:

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It should be fun to see how each artist chooses to make the piece her own. Different buildings, different trees, even different colors will make interesting new paintings.

I may add this to my kit collection if there is enough interest. Please comment to this  post if you would like to see it offered.

Next on my list of to dos is a mural of a farm in Hartland, Vermont. I’ll be using some Porter techniques and a lot of my own to create a  canvas wall covering for a dining room. This is going to be a blast!