Mistakes Are Bound To Happen (or, Why Red Is Evil)

Ahhh, Fall, I do so love you!  But you do bring some stress along: husband's birthday, school "costume parade" (eye roll), Halloween, wedding anniversary, Thanksgiving and Christmas...all in the next 11 weeks!

So I'm trying to get a head start on a few things: for my husband, I'm making a "subway" inspired art piece for him, kind of like this:

source

only without all the different fonts and sideways writing.  I practiced a little bit last weekend, with the canvas I knew I'd be using for my "Make Something" paper collage.  I was able to try all different kinds of painting techniques:

 I learned quite a bit, actually.  For example, gel medium will slightly lighten the color of acrylic paint (artist paint, from a tube) but will drastically change the color of craft paint.  See the kind of pinky color--gel medium and craft paints don't mix well.  You get nice dimension but unreliable color.

Another tidbit I learned: my Faber-Castell Pitt Big Brush Artist Pens (my "art markers") work on canvas.   I have no idea why I didn't know that, but they do--beautifully!  And I was trying the different colors on the red paint to see which one to use, and the blue, purple, dark gray and black all looked black--until I took a picture, and the flash showed just how different the colors are!

So tonight, I painted the canvas pink and drew 1" guidelines in pencil.  Using a similar color, still hopefully easily covered with paint, I practiced writing out the words onto the canvas. 

And then again, in a darker marker color, because I realized the entire song lyrics were not going to fit at all, unless I scrunched my handwriting together, but making it smaller and unreadable defeats its purpose, so I made some adjustments.  I left the 1" marks along the side of the canvas, so I can hopefully use them again without having them be noticeable on the final piece.

And now, I've painted the 4th and final (I hope) coat of red paint on the actual canvas for his gift.  Red paint is a cruel and unforgiving color, by the way, and I see why spray paint was invented, if only to keep the same coverage of red over a large surface.....  At worse, I'll have to either go buy red paint or decoupage red paper onto the canvas.  He's not picky, he won't care :)

Also tonight I took a rather generic "Dream" sign from the stash of goodies from my mom's move and made it..."us."  It took several coats of paint to cover the pattern, and then I used my black art marker and wrote "You Are Loved."  Unfortunately, I messed it up.  But then I remembered that most of the fonts I love right now are more "natural," handwriting-style fonts, so I simply went back over all the letters several times to look "artfully messy."  I love the result!  But I think it needs a rolled flower on a corner....

 

 This wall art is actually hanging on the wall now, lol!   I STILL have not hung up the 7 other pieces I've made in the last 10 days!