Upcycled Canvas

A friend of mine recently painted her downstairs area. It includes her kitchen, dining room, living room and office area. The only room that did not get the paint brush was the bathroom but I think she has plans for that. She asked my opinion on a color scheme. I 'm always surprised and humbled when others ask for my opinion. This is their home! What if they hate my ideas? What if I choose the wrong thing? My friend is what I would call more of a free spirit. You know, the one who can wear pink and orange or polka dots and stripes together and it always works. She can rock a pair of Little Miss Matched socks like a star!  If I tried it I would look like a clown or an elderly lady clearly off her medications.

What we ended up with was something calm and subdued. We worked together to come up with a color scheme that would work well with her existing kitchen cabinetry, painted in a sage green, and existing furniture. Her downstairs is all open space, no doors except for the bathroom, so colors had to work together and you know me...one color is not enough. We chose a warm cream for the longest wall, a dusty blue for the staircase walls and a few shades darker for the small wall the cabinets abut. Very restful, airy and beachy!

Love the rug but it is not fitting in with the design plan so she is hunting for a replacement.

My friend loves the beach (any wonder we're friends?) and she loves the Lord which makes her more than friend; she is my sister. These two things worked in tandem to bring about today's post.

She had a large, 4'x4', stretched canvas with a picture of a big vase of red poppies. You know the ones at Home Goods, ect, just printed on canvas. The piece was dark and was not going to work in the new space. I think she got it for free or at a yard sale. It had a burn mark in it but the overall darkness of the art work allowed the mark to be kind of hidden. As I said, it was a large piece and to find something equally big to take up the space could be an expensive challenge but neither of us is about expensive and so I said, "Paint it!" (Anybody who knows me has heard that phrase come out of my mouth more than once.)

She is a hoot and always a great sport. "YOU can paint it", she said. Really! Excitement and fear intermingled instantaneously. I had no clue what I was getting myself into but my friend was trusting me. I have never painted anything like that before but I was excited for the challenge. How bad could it be?! She wasn't worried because she was just going to get rid of it anyway. No pressure. Right!

We decided on an ocean scene with Scripture.  I used some of the left over wall colors to try to make sure that it fit into the new decor. I also added some darker blue and some green.

I watched a couple youtube videos and took paintbrush in hand. I painted on a primer/base coat to cover the old image. Mentally, I divided my canvas into thirds; sky, water, and sand. I sprayed the canvas area I would work on first with water. It helps your paint to move easier over a dry canvas.

First, I painted the sky. I used the warm white, and two blues that my friend had used on her walls. I loaded my brush with white on one edge and the light blue on the other. I went to the canvas and painted it on in sweeping motions and overlapping my strokes. More white, light blue and a touch of the darker and back to the canvas, making sure to paint around the edges as it is a wrapped canvas that will not be framed.

You can see the damaged spot well in the photo. How am I going to disguise that?!

The bottom three colors are taken from her rooms. They look gray but are shades of blue.

Second, the ocean. I needed a strong horizon line and used some darker blue paint from my stash. I sprayed the canvas again (only below the skyline as your paint will run). Drawing more from Mister's and my vacation to Bermuda than a New England coastal scene, I added turquoises and an acidic green. I added the colors to the canvas in the same fashion as the sky.

It was getting there but I was not happy with the sky/water line. 

I knew I did not want a straight shore line so I pretended the water was coming up to shore and just tried to give it a more organic feel.

Third, I turned the canvas upside down and painted the sand. I used white from the walls, brown, tan, yellow and a little burnt umber. I sprayed the area with a little water. Again, in sweeping, overlapping strokes I made the sand appear on the canvas. I painted with a light hand over the water where it met with the shore as I had read that was how to achieve a sandy bottom look. It worked!

Now the hard part was painting the waves. That took several tries. I used the white again and some floating medium. What I ended up doing was using a technique I had learned watching Donna Dewberry (remember her?). I loaded half of my artist brush with floating medium and half with the white paint. I worked in well to the brush; back and forth on my pallet and the reloaded and went the the canvas. This time I put the brush down and just ever-so-slightly wiggled the bristles in a fashion to make it look like a wave breaking or foam...or something close to it....

Not perfect but what do you want from a wannabe?

Okay, I did tweak the water line and some of the waves. Then I did it again.....and again.....and again. I was making myself nuts and then God thumped me. (Does he do that to anyone else?) We want this to have Scripture on it! I am not the star of the show. My abilities/inabilities are not what this piece is really about. It is about God! A load of pressure went flying off my shoulders and I felt like Christian from Pilgrim's Progress when his pack fell off.

I printed the verse she had settled on in a font I thought pretty. I cut it into strips and I laid them out in a pattern that I had measured and thought was appealing. I rubbed chalk over the back of a strip and carefully laid it onto the canvas. I traced over each letter on the strip, removed it and moved onto the next strip. When I had finished I used my Sharpie to fill in the chalk outlined letters.

And there they were, the words of God became the center of what this was all about and a good reminder to me to not think more of myself than I ought. After all, where was I when He formed the earth? Suddenly, I had a new understanding of and sympathy for Job. Who set the boundries of the sea? Who owns store houses laden with snow? Can I change one hair on my head? Of course, all of these are rhetorical questions. Why do I worry?

Is it perfect? No. Do I see things I could do differently? Yes.

My friend was thrilled. If she sees the imperfections she is far too gracious to say. I wanted to be a blessing to my friend and yet in all this it was I that received the blessing and God was exalted. And once again the Lord has shown me, through something that was bound for destruction and the garbage heap, that only He can give beauty for ashes.

May your day be filled with many blessings and much joy.

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