I paint on and off, and I find that frames make my painting look a lot less like bored- hour- at- the- 8th- grade- art- class, and more like hello- art- institute. So now I carry a measuring tape with me everywhere where an 18 x 24 frame might lurk; meanwhile, I had four frames that fit nothing. I thought briefly about adding “Making My Own Canvas” to the List, but I don’t trust myself to cut 45’ corners. Or stretching canvas well. Or tucking corners. Or, really, anything that has anything to do with canvas stretching. I hear it is cheap and easy. But so is making your own bread, and I ain't kneading my own bagels anytime soon. Instead, I decided to happen upon some thick backboard at Home Depot, and cut it into the given frame sizes. I was going to paint on these, but just then Jesse’s appalling lack of Russian vocabulary surfaced, and I decided to make two of them into chalkboards. Jesse got chalkboard paint, and painted the backboard.
Kitchen chalkboard of verbs (also doubles as grocery 'want' list)
The bedroom study corner
It looks awesome. It would prbably be better if my closet looked organized and Jesse didn't sound out lyrics from various obscene Russian songs on the board (Seryoga), but I guess it's in Russian, so only few people would find it offensive.
To get a really smooth coat, I’d probably need to sand it with 000 sandpaper, re coat, and rinse, repeat. But it works pretty well as is, so I’ve got one in the kitchen, and one in bedroom. That way, next time Jesse claims he doesn’t know how to say “already” in Russian, I can sigh theatrically and point to the board. Of course, right after I did this, I saw a Pottery Barn chalkboard at a garage sale, *just* like I wanted, but I was already pleased with mine. The remaining frames are currently hanging in the study, empty. One of these days, I’ll paint some sunflowers, and a kissy picture on some backboard.
They are a little too big, but I would love to do something like this (the wall art, not the entire dining room):
On a smaller scale. There’s a rasterbator website' that takes an image you submit and returns a “restersized” version of it, which you can print on 8x8’s, or what have you. If I had another blank wall, I’d love to do something like that, probably with a boatload of cheap Ikea picture frames, and one of our camping trip photos. It can be as big as you want or as little as 2 frames. I’m a huge fan of this idea.
Meanwhile, I have three old but big frames left over (in the neighborhood 20x25), all different. I was thinking of doing a painting, in three parts. Kind of like this one I did a while back:
But split into three canvases. Well, backboards, in this case. The only down side to this, is that, of course, the three would have to stay together and require a large chunk of blank wall, which I don’t really have in our two bedroom. Nonetheless, I think I’ll add it to the List. At this point, couple more canvases and I’ll have to start either rotating my artwork, or nailing hooks to the outside of the building. SoCal good weather and all..
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