Painting the papier mache'

The autumn-winter season isn't really helping out with our papier mache' project. We started this about a month ago, I think, and we used 100% pulp to mold our wall decors. It's solid pulp through and through, and so it will take more time to dry up than a model that was made with some rolled-up newspapers inside then plastered with paper strips. But I did not realize that it will take this long to dry up! The Winter season is very near, and Autumn made a grand announcement of it by turning most days gloomy and wet. And so our papier mache' models took a long time to dry up.

Anyways, what we did next is we took a strip of paper, pasted and folded and pasted and folded it a number of times til we were able to get a small, thick strip that we folded over itself one last time forming a loop, into which a piece of cord was inserted. We then pasted this strip at the back of the figure and pasted some more paper strips onto it to make it sturdy and then we set it aside to dry (which was quite quick).
I've bought some paint early on so we can proceed with the project. For the base, I bought some Student Acrylic at NZ$10.00 for one bottle. Arcylic is really good. In its pure, undiluted form, I only needed one coating to make the papier mache' all white. And it dried up quickly too!

But acrylic paint is quite expensive, considering that I will need multiple colors for these projects. So what I did instead was I bought the cheapest watercolour I can find (I think it's around NZ$3.50). You can see that below as Jo-Lo tries his hand at painting. I would like to see if we can get a nice result even if we only have the barest of stuff to work with. This is only for fun with my kid, after all and I am not prepared to buy expensive stuff for this. In fact, even the brushes were NZ$2.50 for a set.

In using watercolour, however, you would expect that the result will be less vibrant than using acylic. I found that out when my wife said the pizza was looking a bit anemic. So if you would like to use watercolour, I suggest two coats. The first coat will be done using a sweeping motion, trying to cover all areas with as little water as possible so you do not diffuse the colour that much. Let it dry, then for the second coating use a smudging motion so you get the most colour possible. This technique worked rather nicely.

I recommend purchasing the white acylic, though, for the base paint. Its vibrant white will make the colour you paint over it look much brighter.

Some sites recommend smoothing out the papier mache mould using the finest sand paper. But I like how our objects came out rather rough-looking, and when we painted on them, the rough surface made the paint unevenly distributed, giving the objects character. Here's the strawberry...

... and here's the pizza.
Both are now hanging on the kitchen wall, their bright red a cheery glow against the cream paint.

We still have a couple more projects to paint on (the moon and the ice cream) so these will be featured in a future post.

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