Palmetto Fork Painting

Until I did the Farmhouse Pumpkins, I'd never painted with a knife. To paint this palmetto, I used a fork. That was another first. 

Before I share the tutorial, an explanation. One of my (ridiculously over-ambitious) goals for 2019 was to design new crafts so there were at least two on my site inspired by each of the 50 states. I made progress, but didn't achieve the goal, so I am continuing to work on it. After sharing my tissue paper cardinal craft, I made a chart with all the states in alphabetical order, went through each of my 50 states pages and counted how many craft suggestions I had for each state, then marked off each state with at least two. 

That left me with 18 states. Of those, 17 states have one craft already and only Montana has none. I did some research to see if there were any interesting state trees, flowers, or birds that inspired me to create. Indeed there were. I started with the palmetto, the state tree of both South Carolina and Florida. 

I had the idea to use a fork to paint my palmetto leaves after looking at South Carolina's state flag. Make your own to see how fun fork painting actually is. You'll need paper, Folk Art acrylic paint, and a plastic fork. And a paintbrush for the rest of the painting.

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Palmetto Fork Painting

Use the brush to paint a tree trunk in a medium brown. Add a darker brown shadow on the right side of the trunk. With one tine of the fork, add bootjacks onto the trunk - medium brown on the left and dark brown on the right. 

Make a puddle of medium green paint on your palette and dip the fork into it. Stamp the fork onto the paper, turning to make fronds in all directions. 

Use a lighter shade of green to add highlights primarily to the left side of the fronds. With a darker green, add shadows to the right side of the fronds. 

Return to the paintbrush. Water down a light blue and use horizontal strokes to paint the sky. Use a watered down medium brown to make the ground.