A Cunning Plan

Thanks for comments on the choice of castles for my can.  Realising that the end result would be quite small I opted for the simplest design in an elliptical frame.  I had no chance of managing an elliptical frame freehand. I read somewhere that Giotto once painted a perfect circle to prove his credentials as an artist, but I am no Giotto so I needed a cunning plan. 

First I used the shapes feature MSWord to generate an ellipse of the right size and printed that out. Then I cut the paper roughly outside the ellipse and taped that to my can ensuring that the complete outline was covered in masking tape.

Like so

Then using a sharp blade I cut out the ellipse, the outline of which I could see through the tape.

Leaving a masked ellipse on the can ready for painting

That bit of pointed vertical tape at the top was to mark the position of the vertical centre line to keep it under the centre hinge on the can lid.

Simples.

I have one picture each side of the can so I had to do it twice.  Painting the pictures wasn’t all that hard, having practiced and kept it simple. I found it best to cradle the can in my lap as I painted

There was still one empty space to fill on the lower half of the can each side of the handle, so I thought I’d have a go at some daisies which I did in a sort of elliptical daisy chain.  So now it looks like this.

I notice the castle is a bit out of focus in the photo, it’s not really fuzzy. There’s a little bit of neatening up to do on the edges of the picture, but I reckon that’ll be OK.

Well I’m getting there, and I must admit I am enjoying it. I still have to do the daisies on the other side, write “Herbie” on the centre band and possibly add some decoration on it round the back, and then think up something to paint on the lid.  Then it’ll take me about a day to clear up the mess I’ve made on our conservatory table.