Crapting: Crafts for Regular People

I need more crafts tutorials up on here, which I have always kind of planned on doing, I just never get around to it. Or more truthfully, though my stuff looks good from a distance, when you look up close it's not exactly...well made, I guess? Some things turn out really cool, other things are more of a beauty in the eye of the beholder thing. 

So for my first installment of "Crapting: Crafts for Regular People," we will take a look at some of my paintings!

Acrylic on canvas

I do really like these ones and they were super simple to make. Just take a picture of your critter, print it out to whatever size you'd like the silhouette to be, trace around it, paint the background whatever you want and the silhouette whatever you want. I used acrylic paint because I don't understand how to use watercolor but really any paint would work. You can add patterns to where ever, decoupage flowers or some shit. Go crazy. It's your life. I also attempted to have each dog's paw print on there too. As you can see, the prints are a little sketchy thanks to all their paw fur and also because I was basically fingerprinting dogs. I did not take a picture of the white paint paw prints that were tracked through the house but I assure you, that shit was everywhere.

Acrylic on canvas

Ahh yes. My masterpiece. I painted this for my mom for Christmas one year. We went on a local "Yule Walk", basically you go to places around town that are all decorated for Christmas. My inspiration came from two things that evening. #1. The last stop we went to was the art museum and there was a picture of a figure in this shape in one of the paintings and we were like, "Whhhhhaaa." #2. It was super cold and my mom bundled herself up so much she looked strikingly like the guy from the painting while we walked around outside. So bada-bing bada-boom, added a wreath, threw in some familiar details from that night and made it amazing. Ta-da! Perfect gift!

Turns out I can't really think of any other paintings I've done besides random things at work. Pumpkins, windows, cardboard stand-ups. I'm alright but I'm definitely not great. I don't know how to do all the cool shading and texturing and shadowing. I'm sure if I actually tried to learn more or improve my technique I would be alright but like everything else in life, I completely lack the motivation to do that.

I guess if I had to pass along some advice it would be buy yourself some nice paintbrushes or ask someone to buy you nice brushes as a present. Nothing sucks more than trying to paint and having bristles come off onto your painting. And take care of them, don't let them get all shitty. Also if you shop at Hobby Lobby they tend to have some nice sales on canvas and nothing screams artist like painting with nice brushes on a canvas. So canvas, quality paintbrushes and a nice Van Dyke Brown, before you know it, you'll be arting all over the place.