52 Weeks of Art: Week 8

Week 8: Spray Paint

Welcome to week 8 of 52 weeks of art! What are we doing this week?

     I don't know what I was thinking when I added spray paint to the list of mediums to do. I watched so many videos of people creating amazing pieces of art with spray paint and I was like, "What?! I can't do this!" Seriously. They all make it look so easy. And amazing.

It's like magic! How do they do this?

For reals? How?

A-maze-ing!

     So, watching all these videos did NOT help my confidence that I could pull this off. But, I was going to try it anyway. A lot of the artists used stencils. So, I thought I'd make my own stencils. Of what, though? Now, I'm no expert here - not even close - but it looked like doing some sky/space/cloud painting would be the easiest. I made myself a cloud stencil.

Those are clouds. 

     I thought I made my cloud stencil small enough. Turns out I did not. I'll show you later how not small my clouds are. Other than a stencil, I needed the most important part of spray painting. I needed spray paint! Instead of buying a bunch of paint, I just raided our garage for whatever my husband had. Apparently we own a LOT of spray paint. Here is just a small sampling of what we have. I pulled out some of the colors I thought we might use. I used mostly cool colors. Rebecca used all the colors.

Thanks to my husband we had lots of spray paint to choose from!

     Other supplies I needed included paper for the table I was using, tape, canvas, gloves, and a bottle cap. This is probably common sense stuff here, but you're going to want to spray paint outside. Not just because of the fumes, but you probably don't want over spray all over your house. Well, I didn't. Maybe you do. Who am I to judge?

     

     During my research into spray paint art I looked up the best paper to paint on. Do you know what they use? It's poster board. I never would have guessed that. Then again, I'm not a spray paint artist. You use the glossy side of the paper. Unfortunately, I didn't have any poster board. I did have some mini canvases, though. I gessoed them so the canvas wouldn't soak up the paint. My research suggested that I sand down the gesso... I did not. I was lazy. 

     How'd the spray paint art turn out? Take a look. I made a trio of paintings. The first one I tried was a space painting with a moon and some "clouds". This is where my not-small-enough cloud stencil didn't work out so great. I used the bottle cap to help me create the moon. I'm calling it a moon. It might not really look like it, but hey, it is what it is.

Moon, space, clouds

     It was like a billion degrees outside while we were painting. Alright, it was more like a hundred degrees. My point is, it was hot. SO hot. I left my paintings outside so they could bake in the sun. Here they are "baking".

Here's my trio of paintings. I just made some "space" for the other two paintings. Here they are drying.

     I really liked how my paper looked when I was finished with my painting.

I think there is more paint on the paper than there is on the canvas.

    After my paintings were dry I got some pictures. Because I didn't sand down the gesso you can really see the texture of the canvas. It's not as glossy and smooth as spray paint artists get. 

     Will I be doing spray paint art in the future? I don't know. It was fun, but it definitely will take practice if  I want to be any good at it. 

On to rating spray paint...

     Just a reminder on the criteria for rating each medium.

Ease of use: How easy was this medium to use.

Affordability: How affordable supplies are for each medium.

Accessibility: How easily accessible supplies are for each medium. Example, are specific tools required that are hard to find?

Fun to Use: How much enjoyment I got out of using this medium

     So, for spray paint, my rating is: 14

Ease of use: 3

    Not easy. At all. It was easy to accidentally spray over everything I just painted, though. Maybe if I was painting a larger surface it would have been easier, but painting a 3" x 3" canvas was difficult for me.

Affordability: 2

     I'll be honest here, I don't even know what type of spray paint is the best to use for art. I do know that you can get a can of paint at Home Depot for around $5. That's just for one color. If you're needing to use a lot of colors it'll add up quickly. I used 8 colors. If we didn't already have the paint, that would have cost me at least $40. So yeah, I'm going to say that spray paint isn't something that you can get in to on a budget. 

Accessibility: 5

     Luckily, if you do decide to try your hand at spray paint art, spray paint is available at any hardware store, the internet, and possibly at an arts and crafts store.

Fun to Use: 4

     I enjoyed spray painting. It did cause me some frustrations when I couldn't get things the way I wanted. Sometimes I would accidentally spray over the whole painting and I'd have to start over. But, I'd say that overall spray painting was a fun medium to use.

     If you would like to go on this epic art adventure with me, next week we will be doing...

     If you choose to follow along, please post your work using #52weekartadventure!