Geometric Canvas

My sister is working with a wonderful program in Indianapolis called Art with a Heart. The program gives hands-on visual experiences that educate at-risk children who have lost art classes in their schools. Let’s let them tell you what they’re all about:

Art with a Heart is having their annual gala in April and will be having an auction of local art pieces. I wanted to try to improve upon the technique I used for my Happy Glam painting a few years back.

I started by prepping the canvas with gesso. This helps to even out the woven texture of the canvas. Looking back I should have put at least two coats. I taped the canvas off using Frog Tape that I’d cut into thin strips with scissors. This was a very frustrating task. I’d used art tape in the past but thought the Frog Tape would stick better.

It didn’t.

I still don’t know what I’m doing wrong to get a clean line but I will keep trying! I think the key is to have a smoother canvas surface and make sure to go over all of the tape once it’s laid with a credit card or something stiff to adhere the tape further.

I covered the entire canvas with two coats of Bronze acrylic paint. Here is what it looked like after only one coat.

The next step was to fill in the triangles that I didn’t want bronze. It ended up being more than I had first envisioned. In the beginning I was envisioning mostly bronze with splashes of the other colors. Once I started painting I loved the color combo so much I just kept painting!

Again, I had to do more than one coat of paint, depending on the color. The pink was very translucent and I had to do 5 coats on some triangles. I rotated between painting the different colors for a couple reasons: 1. Acrylic dries on your pallet quickly. 2. Acrylic dries on your canvas quickly. This is bad and good. I like that it dries quickly between coats but I had to hurry because I didn’t want to mix more paint to try to match the shade I started with.

Once I was satisfied with each triangle being as opaque as I’d liked, I let it dry over night. I usually peel tape off while paint is wet but since I had so many layers underneath that I’d let dry, I thought it would be safer this way. As I peeled the tape I made sure to go with the grain of the tape. This helped to not let the top layer of paint peel off with the tape.

Or so I thought. It obviously did not work well enough. There were spots where the bronze leaked under the tape from the very beginning. There were also spots where the top layer of paint had peeled off to expose the bronze underneath. All in all, the lines were not as clean as I’d hoped for by using the Frog Tape.

Sigh. My heart had deflated once all the tape was peeled off. I didn’t have the drive to try to touch up the mistakes because, in my past experience, this only makes things worse. I feel bad because this painting is going to someone who is generously donating money for a great cause. I can only hope they’re looking for an ‘antiqued modern’ piece. Maybe it’s best to just look at from an arms length (like my nails once they’re painted.)

Although I’d call this painting a failure, one thing that felt strangely rewarding was the clean up!? If you are using a plastic pallet, you can let the paint dry over a few days and peel it off easily. It’s the little things.

What did you think about the painting? Nice colors at least? Have any of you done acrylic painting? I’d love to know how to get clean lines! I’ll keep you updated if I ever figure it out. 😉 OH! Also, I named this piece ‘Yacht Dreams’ because the colors seemed like preppy colors I’d wear if I were to go sailing on a yacht. A girl can dream!