Wednesday, July 20, 2011

My First Painting

So let me start out by reminding you, in case you haven't been following for long, why I started writing this blog. I wanted to start this blog to encourage others to do projects and crafts that they wouldn't normally have the encouragement to do. I have been a little creative throughout my life but always very timid to try anything new, afraid that I might fail at it. Well, guess what, sometimes I do fail, and sometimes I am able to redeem myself. The final project may not have turned out the way that I had intended it to but I still love it and at least I know that I accomplished it. So back to the project:

For so many years I have had a strong desire to paint.
I have always wished I could be one of those people that could just pick up a paint brush at any time and just start painting. When they finally take a step back, it looks amazing.

As for me, I am not that kind of person. I took at few painting classes in College and trust me when I say, I did not want to save a single thing that I did. Part of it was because I would take to much time on things but still, they were never good.

Well, since I started this blog to try things I never had before whether I fail or not, I decided that I was going to take the plunge. Almost 3 years ago I saw a JcPenney ad with a piece of artwork designed with a tree that was cut between 2 separate wall hanging pieces (I hope that makes sense).  Well, I had the intention of recreating that (from memory because there is no way I would keep something for 3 years).

I started out with 2 plain canvases from Michael's. I painted them the same color at my bedroom wall color because I wanted it to blend and just the tree part stand out.
 
I wanted to be creative with it and just started painting. I started by just drawing single lines to get an idea on where the branches would go. I thickened up the base of the tree and then tool a step back.

This is what I saw:

This looked NOTHING like the AD and I got really discouraged. I wanted to repaint the entire thing gray again and just start over. I decided to walk away for a few days. Just let it sit come back another day to see if I could fix it.

Well, I am so happy that I did. I changed what my original idea was (which was to have the whole tree top to bottom on these canvases but then realized [thanks to the help of my Hubby] that I made the trunk to big so that was not going to look proportional)

I abandoned that idea and just wanted to have branches coming off the tree and didn't care if was the top or bottom.

Again, I am not a professional painter. This was my first one, but I was very happy with it and again, felt very accomplished. Like I had conquered a fear of mine.

Here is the final result:


I even hung the canvas myself (which is probably why they look crooked) but non the less, I am very happy that I was able to do something like this myself.

Photobucket

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Please leave me a comment. I read every one of them and really do cherish what people have to say. It is the highlight of my day. Feel free to ask me questions and I will try and respond in a timely manner. Thanks for visiting and for leaving a comment.