Mondrian Inspired

So if you read in my previous post about the garage art I had created last summer, you would have seen in there that the Mondrian inspired piece was another one I wanted to work on at some point. It took a while, but during winter break when all of my kids (except one!) decided to cancel for the week before Christmas, I had a lot of time on my hands. Finally found some time to write about it so I'm now getting around to sharing.

I went about the process a little differently than the website I got the idea from (because I actually didn't read the website and after seeing the picture, created my own process on how to go about it in my head.) My was a little more tedious than the other way, but it worked.

The first thing I did was tape to paint the black lines.

If you remember from the previous post, I had explained how my husband had picked up gallons of paint randomly on his way home from work one day for free after seeing a Craigslist ad for free paint. Lo and behold, one of those gallons of paint was black.

Now here's where I start telling you all the DIY secrets. I found the can of black paint, but the instant I cracked it open, it was so sour and bitter and repulsive smelling that I knew I was not going to be using it to paint my wall. I closed it right up, made a mental note to make a phone call later to dispose of it properly, and went on to plan B. Plan B was using another dark shade of paint that we had which I originally thought was black, but after using it for a small project, realized it was a very, very dark shade of blue. Seeing as this project is completely my own and only inspired by Mondrian, I veered from the true black lines in his paintings and opted for the very, very dark shade of blue.

Completed lines

As you can see, the dark blue does its job of being a dark contrasting color and doesn't make that big of a difference.

With the first color - blue!

As you can see, I also did not stay true to Mondrian colors. He used completely primary colors whereas I am using softer pastel shades of each of the three. The reason for this was that coming in, I knew I did not have a true red. The closest thing I had was a milder pink, and this was supposed to be a project that did not require spending any money. So I was not going out to buy red paint. Also, I later realized (which worked out in my favor) that the can of yellow paint we had was also a soft yellow and not a bright yellow. Initially, I had wanted to mix the blue to a lighter baby blue because of personal color preference, but it ended up complementing the other colors better.

The pink paint has gone on.

Finished!

As you can see, I pretty much lightened each shade of color from Mondrian's....by arguably the same degree for each color. I purposely left the edges fuzzy and soft because I wanted a "materializing" effect. Once in the heart of the painting, I made sure to fill everything in with crisp clean edges. 

If you stare at it long enough, you'll actually see the illusion of grey circular dots at the intersection of the dark lines. I don't know how to explain this one, but it's just one of the many ways that our eyes can play tricks on us. 

This is actually my smallest piece of artwork in the garage. It only spans about 4 ft wide and tall. My other pieces are pretty massive and measure about 5 ft wide and 6 ft tall.

I don't know how proud my Humanities teachers or my art history teacher in high school would be, and I didn't do exceptionally well in either class, but I do still love art and find ways to be creative with the space I'm given. I'm slowly running out of walls in my garage to paint,  but I'll think of something. ;)