El Husbandino has been doing a lot of traveling and job-interviewing of late and the other day he called from a faraway land to request a "pep talk". It was then that I realized I am kind of horrible at pep-talking. He is really great at it and has pepped me up many times over the years so I felt sad I couldn't reciprocate.
That's what inspired this little project...
I came up with the idea of trying to make a "motivational poster" for Husband as a permanent pep-talk he can hang on the wall - since I'm not very good at the verbal sort.
I found the paint-by-number at a thrift-store and I've always wanted to do the thing where you paint on old paintings. Even though it's been done to death, I still like the idea.
I'm a fan of Wayne White and his typographic paintings and I decided to basically rip off his style since this was just something that would be staying in the house and I will never start doing this as art to sell and frankly I'm not creative enough to come up with my own thing.
...but I was happy with my choice of old painting and cheesy phrase and the outcome of the project so I decided to show it on this blog that hardly anyone reads...
But credit where credit is due, I DID NOT COME UP WITH THE IDEA OF PAINTING TEXT ON AN OLD PAINTING!!
My main inspirations were Wayne White and Whilhelm Staehle but umpteen other artists have also done the "painting on old paintings thing"... I'm most attracted to these two because they use text so well.
There.
Moving on, here's what I did:
I tried painting first but I don't have oil paint and acrylic over old oil really doesn't really work.
Also, the paint-by-number was really warped so painting neat, straight lines was really hard.
Later I found an old tv-dinner-table out by a local dumpster and scavenged the top of it to make a hard base for the painting. I nailed the painting on to the board. This made things much easier to work with... plus I think the nails make it look "rustic"...
Sketching:
When my painting skills failed, I decided to screen print using the freezer paper method... which meant cutting everything out and limited detail (hence the choice of very blocky letters) (I was also up against a Christmas-day-deadline)...
The screen wasn't wide enough so I had to add the N and Ss later...
I eventually got all the letters screened on there. Because the printing ink was also acrylic, the letters all crackled a bit but again, I think it adds to the rustic feel of the thing. I sprayed it with fixative to hold it in place.
Next, I got our super-cool-building-super, Bill, to take his table saw to it and cut down the edges.
And voila!
That Y is a bit wonky and the Ss are too big but "oh well"... overall, I'm happy with it.
By the way, I wasn't trying to belittle mountains and all their glory in any way! haha!
I chose the phrase because the picture had mountains in it and my husband really IS very good at tackling big projects and making them look easy... like it's no big deal, no drama. He does the exact opposite of making molehills into mountains.
Side view:
Oh! and without even asking, Super-Bill went and made a nice little hanging hole too! He really is a swell guy!
In-situ... until Husband figures out where to hang it:
You are freakin' awesome. Also I miss you!
ReplyDeletethanks! and we still miss you guys too!
ReplyDeleteI'm way behind, but this is fantastic (and I clicked through to comment without realizing Rhia already had).
ReplyDeleteWe have a big artless gap on the living room wall...maybe we can commission something!