Paintings: A Year in the Making

We have lived in our house for just over three years now, and for quite awhile I have pondered what to hang over our bed in the master bedroom. I've perused artwork from all the big box stores, Crate and Barrel and Pottery Barn catalogs, etc. While I like some of it, I always come away with the feeling that I could create something just as cool for less money and with a little more...heart. (Not literally hearts. That would be tacky. I just mean it comes from the heart because I made it myself.)

Anyway, I started cutting out pictures of things I like and looking at websites for inspiration. A few of my clippings survived about a year in our junk drawer. Every time I went looking for a rubber band I'd see the photos and think, "I really should get back to thinking about those paintings," and then I'd slam it shut and go about my business. So, when the time was finally right, I came up with the idea to buy three rectangle canvases, paint them three different colors, and then paint the same stenciled vine pattern on each canvas.

I started with the stencil. Foolishly, I thought I might be able to pick up a cool stencil from Lowe's or Hobby Lobby, but that didn't pan out. Instead, I had to buy special stencil paper so that I could fashion my own.

My first stop was, of course, the Internet. I printed some vine designs off a random website with the intention of copying it exactly. But when time came to transfer the stencil to the special paper, it was clear it wouldn't be so cut-and-dry. (Or cut-and-cut, since I was dealing with stencils.) Since I was going for a long rectangle, I couldn't make the stencils fit. I started sketching some things that I thought might work, and when I found one I liked I put it onto the stencil paper. Here is how the stencil looked:


I put the stencil away for several weeks while I dealt with the next step in the process, which was painting the canvases. I chose green, yellow, and rust to match the color scheme in our bedroom. I had one misfire on the green color - I added too much yellow the first time and had to wait for it to dry and re-paint it with just a green and white paint mixture. It turned out much better the second time.


Here my story takes a detour, as I tell you about how it has been 105 degrees for about 10 days in Texas. Last Friday was just like any other scorching day, and I figured there was about a snowball's chance in Texas of getting any sort of rain. So it was with confidence that I left the windows of the shop (where the paintings were drying) wide open while the family piled in the car to run a couple errands. (I also left our pop-up camper open in preparation for a camping trip, but that's a sad story for another day.)

Needless to say, while we were gone a freak thunderstorm came screaming into our town, and dumped about an inch of rain on us. Lucky for me, oil and water have a long, documented history of being natural foes, so all I had to do was mop up the rain that was sitting on my canvases with a towel and all was well. The beds in the camper were another story...

When we got back from our camping trip, (where we slept on nice, dry beds thanks to the aforementioned 105-degree heat...don't say it never did anything for ya!) I figured it was time to break out the stencil and attempt the most complicated portion of this project. I mixed some dark brown paint, and set the stencil on top of the rust-colored canvas.


Here is the canvas once I'd painted over the stencil:


And here is the final rust-colored canvas:


I am pleased with how it turned out! I was worried that due to the brush strokes from the background I would not get a clean line when I painted the stencil, but the special stencil paper did the trick. The only minor mishap I had was in transferring the stencil to the other canvases. I got a bit of excess paint smudges in various spots on the green canvas, but since it already had a rustic look with some brown streaks in it, I didn't care too much. I was more careful to wipe off the stencil on the final yellow canvas.


After letting the vines dry for a day or so, I went ahead and hung the paintings in the bedroom. For some reason, even though my husband has tools stashed in every corner of the shop and in the laundry room, there was absolutely no hammer to be found. So, in a move I felt was particularly cliched, I used the heel of my boot to pound in the nails. It was an improvisational way to finish a largely improvisational project.