DIY Wall Art

Right before last fall, I got this random itch to paint.  I'm not a painter now, nor have I ever been.  But, something just made me want to paint!  I figured I could put something together that would look fairly decent and, surely, I could save a few bucks doing it myself!  

You can purchase a pack of canvases for a very reasonable price.  I always get the cheapest ones or the ones on sale.  For avid painters, I know they'll tell you they're garbage and to invest in the better ones.  But, as I pointed out...  I'm no painter.....   at all.   

I mainly stuck to 8x10 canvases.  There was no particular reason for that, I just thought they'd be the most versatile. This is one of the several pieces I put together.  This canvas went through some trials before I was happy with it.  It has about 3 under layers of mistakes that got painted over.  This baby started as a family hand print piece.  It didn't work out so I spray painted a white primer over it. (I'm SURE that is a HUGE no-no in the art world!)  Then it became something else but I didn't like the colors.  Rinse and repeat.  We did this motion a few times until I decided to randomly slap some colors on and blend them.  When I got that far I thought, "Ohhh, it looks like a sunrise or sunset!"  It stayed!  YAY!  I did some searching for birds on branches in silhouette.  I worked from a couple different photos to get the exact look I wanted. 

Did you know that birds are much easier to paint than they seem?  It is just a couple connected ovals, a triangle, and some brush swishes (official term, hahaha!) for the tail.  I like birds more than I thought I did!

OH!  And I sealed in the painting with an acrylic sealant in matte finish.  I did use all acrylic paints for this.  I have since purchased a glossy sealant (which was more for my son's Halloween costume last year and then it got tossed in with my supplies, so I use it now!) which, at times, I like more.  It seems to bump up the color intensity more than the matte one.