Whale Chalkboards for the Nursery

I'm not much of an artist, but I can sketch something out of chalk!

I found another project on Pinterest that I fell in love with.  It is a three panel whale with a spout going up.  I wanted to re-create this to match Lucky's nursery, but I decided to tweak it to have our own spin.  A chalkboard painting!  We made a fun chalkboard with chalkboard paint when we moved into our new apartment.  The plan was that we could change the art periodically, but so far our stick figure family has stuck.

I am going to make the panels chalkboard and paint the white on with a Liquid Chalk Marker.  Why would I want to do this?  I'm not super confident with my abilities as a painter, and doing it in chalk will be easier to fix if I mess it up.  We did a chalkboard sketch of our family and have had no smudging or anything for months.  Plus, I will be able to switch it up later if Lucky decides he wants another decoration in his room.  (But it is really so I can fix mistakes.  This project is pretty inexpensive so the cost isn't really the factor.  

They didn't have the colors we wanted in chalkboard paint, but we found a chalkboard coating that we could apply after we painted the canvases.  

I did a coat of paint and then decided to do one more before applying the chalkboard coating.

the first coat of paint.  I did a second coat so it would not be so streaky

After two coats the paint was very even.   I applied the first coat of chalk board cover and it was all streaky again!  Hopefully this will dry clear...  (Spoiler Alert - it did!)

Now it was time to draw the whale.  I started with an outline, and my first pass actually didn't turn out too badly. I only had to erase a little bit on the tail.  I colored in the whale with a couple of coats of chalk.  I like how it looks "sketched".

I had no trouble free handing the mist-spout.  I think that is my favorite part of this painting.  

This artwork is one of my favorite pieces of Lucky's under the sea nursery, probably because I made it myself.  I wonder what other pictures would be fun to draw across three panels.  A giraffe would look really cool (with a super long neck) or a brontosaurus.   

Now that I'm preparing to publish this post Lucky's nursery is finally complete!  (We had to wait a while for a chair-and-a-half to be delivered.)  I cannot wait to share the whole thing with you.  I have never designed a room from start to finish, and I'm so happy with how it turned out.  I also think that all of the elements will be really easy for us to move into another home when the time comes.