We have a big white wall in our living room and it’s pretty boring to look at. I thought it would be fun to make a painting. I thought about it for a while and couldn’t think of a) what to paint and b) what I had the ability to paint. I finally decided on painting portraits of all the housemates. Now, I’m no Rembrandt so I used a couple of techniques to make my paintings seem better than they are.

 

 

First of all, I drew all of pictures on paper; I did something called blind contour drawing where I didn’t look at the picture at all during the drawing process. This resulted in a very silly picture where ears are in mouths and hair isn’t attached to heads, etc. The benefit here is if the picture looks silly on purpose no one is the wiser that I can’t actually draw in a realistic way!

After making the initial drawings, I copied out the images on a larger scale onto the canvas using small strips of masking tape. After the outlining was done with tape, I filled it all in with paint. Once the paint dried, I removed the tape to reveal the image! I used really bright colours because it’s more fun! Plus it was the only set of acrylic paint at the store.

Without further ado, the paintings which now hang proudly (and loudly) in our living room.