From: Bart Castleberry
I have seen the paintings (Indian?) on the side of your boat and you mentioned putting one on the new boat that you are building. These sound very interesting to me, I would really like to find some thing similar to paint on mine. I have a fair amount of Indian heritage and thought it would be really neat to put something on the canoe that not only looked attractive but had meaning to it as well. I was wondering if you have any idea where I could find a design or designs to look through that might be applicable. Any info you might know of would be great.
Bart,
The paintings that I do are Northwest Coast Indian style, usually Kwakiutl, sometimes Tlingit. I found artwork in books, put it under an opaque projector in my living room at night, and enlarged it to the size I wanted it onto butcher paper. Then I made any modifications to the shape that I needed to fit it onto a boat, and traced it on with large artist's carbon paper. I used carbon paper facing both directions under the pattern on the first side, so that the design would appear in reverse orientation on the back side of the paper, to be used for the design on the opposite side of the bow.
So check your library.... maybe even the web, I've seen a whole slew of Native American sites... The Adney & Chappelle book from the Smithsonian, "Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America" has several designs that were actually used on canoes by the Indians in the eastern parts of the US and Canada. Some of my Kwakiutl designs came from Bill Holm's "Northwest Coast Indian Art."
I use sign-painter's enamel which has a quality called "ropiness" (helps the paint pull off the brush in long lines) and a sign-painting brush called a "quill" that has long, soft squirrel hairs.
It isn't easy for an amatuer to get a smooth-edged painting, even with the long-haired brushes and sign-painting enamel. Tamal Vista has ready-made "decals" that can be applied to your canoe. To make your own decals, it's really simple: find the design you want in a book, lay it on a copy machine and enlarge it to the size you want, and then ask a professional copy place (around here they're called Kinko's) to copy it onto a self-adhesive, clear decal sheet for you. I've been told that you can even fiberglass over it, although I would choose to put the decal on top of the epoxy-glass laminate to insure the bond of the epoxy to the wood. The decal can always be replaced if it wears out.
David
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