Personal Project: Art Wall (Pt. 2)

Okay so, not a ton of progress has been made with the art wall project, but there's been some. The sun has been out in Portland (finally!) and I've found myself spending my free time, ya know, sitting on rooftop bars getting happy hour, playing lawn games in the park, driving around with windows down, frappuccino in hand, reveling in the fact that Somebody That I Used To Know is on the radio 24/7 because that song is SO fun to sing along to! Not that I relate to it or anything. ;) In other words, I haven't been spending much of my time sitting inside scavenging the net or shopping indoors for pieces of artwork to add to my collection.

So... progress:

1) I decided to paint the gold frame of the plein air painting a very dark, blueish-black based on the input I got in my previous post. My thought was that the poorly applied gold made the painting look too wannabe-fancy, so I wanted to do something more understated that still made the colors pop.

I mixed generic black and blue acrylic paint that I picked up at my local art supplies store with the portions shown in the photo above. I used a large brush for most of the frame and a very tiny one for the edges closest to the canvas. There were a few times I accidentally got paint on the canvas, but I was able to wipe it off very easily with a damp cloth.

I only painted one coat because I was pressed for time (story of my life) and I wasn't totally sure about the color, plus it looked good enough to hang on the wall for a few days while I thought it over. I'm still not crazy about the painting (perhaps it was too much of an impulse buy?) but maybe it's just because it might be a little too mature for the rest of my apartment. (Ha, yeah that's probably it! See the pinata below.) Maybe if I move it to the bathroom or kitchen it will be so unexpected I'll like it again? Sitting on it...

2) Frida and Diego (whose frame I decided to leave as-is for now) were getting lonely, so to fill up some of the blank space above them I hung a painting I recently created at a one-time art class my friend Amanda and I attended on one super-wild Friday night (yeah Living Social!) And fyi, that's Oregon's Mt. Hood yo! I don't think it will stay up there forever because I'm not crazy about it, but I do like it for the moment. 

3) Finally, a while back, I was on the prowl for some kind of book-related print to hang above my bookshelf, so I pretty much struck gold when I discovered that Peter Max (one of my favorite artists) had created a poster for National Library Week in 1969.  I found a print of it on Ebay and going with the bright color palette, I bought a royal blue frame at Ikea for only $8.99. Framed on top of white paper, it declares, "Be All You Can Be. Read." :)

And the "art wall" still-in-progress:

Really excited to get that Alexandra Valenti photograph on the wall. :) Until next time...