Part of my dream of decorating the house was producing our own artwork. I can proudly share with you my first painting. Hopefully it will not be our last.
This was the image that served as inspiration. I photographed it out of a home deco magazine with my phone and I can't even reference the artist or the magazine - I've been carrying it around on my phone for that long! Finally I sat down and planned the artwork that would be inspired by it.
We bought 3 large canvas panels to create a big surface to work with. We liked the idea of a broken up image.
I sketched the shapes I wanted on paper first and then used a ruler (aka a long plank of wood I found in the garage!) to mark the lines onto the canvas. Then I used masking tape to trace the shapes and ensure nice straight lines after I painted in the colours. Choosing the colours for the final piece was probably the hardest part.
MAJOR lesson number one. Use good quality tape or paint faster. I learnt the hard way that the cheap tape I bought from Daiso left very very very sticky residue all over the nice clean white parts of the painting. I also did the painting over a few weeks so it was really a weekend project and this also kept the tape on for far too long. It took my mother to look at it and say to me: "you better get that tape off...it might leave marks". Boy does mother know best!
So I ended up painting in all the white parts after my great effort to NOT paint that bit.
It's a little difficult to see in the bottom panel but I used some light cream and white paint to add a pattern to the lightest coloured panels. I wanted there to be some texture to the image.
This is the way the canvases and image was initially painted...
This is the final piece of work displayed on our wall. We liked it better mounted horizontally. Very pleased with the end result.
Kay
