Last week I posted about the new backdrop I started painting and on Friday, I finished it! 
After letting it dry for a few days, I rolled it up and am storing it in a temperature controlled space. 

I’m SO excited to shoot on it! I learned quite a bit on making this backdrop. I loosely followed this tutorial and came away with some lessons of my own…

I got everything, paint, dropcloth, sponge and rollers from Lowes.

Using a Canvas Dropcloth
– Mine had a seam smack dab in the middle, which I wasn’t expecting. I would double check brand or the cloth itself before purchasing. As it is I’ll have to be careful with how I shoot or photoshop the line out.

Sponges
– The honeycomb sponges are NOT neccessary, and I think the large, cheap, “car-wash” ones work better – they hold more water and are softer. I used the sponges more for spreading the water and paint around, and less to create texture. Both created a bit of texture.
– The sponges, very damp but not dripping with water, are ESSENTIAL to creating soft transitions between shades of paint.

Paint
– I learned about WHY you should use acrylic paint! Acrylic paint is the most elastic of all paint, which is why, obviously, you should use it for something you’re going to roll up. Latex paint is partly acrylic, partly clay filler. So while latex is cheaper, it will chip off of your backdrop and crack and generally look bad…. unless that’s the look you’re going for.
– Brand – I used the cheapest brand Lowes offered, which was Olympic One. It was $12 for a quart, and I used 4 quarts.
– Quanity – I underestimated how much paint I would need, and only got 3 quarts to start with. I got one white, one pale tan, and one very dark tan. Because of Sue’s post, I thought I would run out of the light stuff first, but it was the dark that went fast! I had to postpone the backdrop until I got a second quart of dark paint. 
– When I got the second quart of dark paint I actually deviated from the paint swatches that were a part of their own color pallette, and went for a darker, slightly more yellow brown, to keep the edges from being too terracotta. 

All in all, I’m satisfied with this for the first go. Now, I can’t wait to shoot the tulle skirt shots on this…..