Still Life with Piano and Cello

When I went to Chicago, we spent almost the entire day browsing the Chicago Museum of Art. I really enjoyed this because looking at art is not a luxury I get to do anymore. Taking the kids with me would mean I need to watch them and make sure they're behaving around valuable artwork. If I don't take the kids, it means I need to make separate plans so they're under someone's supervision. 

When I was at the museum, I saw authentic works by Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Claude Monet, and the famous Seurat pointillism. It was great, and I loved seeing these paintings in person because I had studied many of them in high school during my humanities class and AP art history. However, as famous as these paintings are, they're actually not the ones which stuck with me.

I surprised myself by the one which actually stuck. I had seen multiple pianos on display throughout the museum, but then I saw this artwork.

"This painting is part of a series by Vilhelm Hammershoi capturing his sparsely decorated apartment at Strandgade 30 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Hammershoi often moved furniture and objects around his home like studio props: here, he placed a chair, piano, cello, and violin in a corner of the drawing room. Despite the inclusion of musical instruments, the scene evokes only eerie silence, with no sense of a human presence to play them."

This painting hit a little too close to home. There's definitely an emptiness depicted in this scene. The arrangement of the chair pulled back with an empty space, the violin placed atop the chair. The cello leaning against the piano. The almost empty wall behind the piano. 

 

This is my real life experience with this painting. I purposely edited the photograph so the colors are more muted, hazy. The cello is leaning against the chair, bow placed behind on the seat of the chair. The piano, although with the key cover open, has the bench pushed in, not being used. It, too, is empty. 

This painting and this photo are lonely, sad, and burdened. The piano and cello from the painting are probably no longer arranged in that way. Perhaps they were moved shortly after the posing for this painting. The piano in the photo has been sold. The cello has been packed up and moved out of this room. The furniture is gone. The frames hanging on the wall are gone. The walls have been repainted a different color and the floors have been redone. Piece by piece of this room were removed one by one. 

I'm glad my friend had this photo. It made me sad, but it is the perfect real life experience we shared represented in the painting above from 1907. 

Shadows to See Light

The blog has been very quiet lately. It's been an intense month. I haven't quite figured out how to put all of my feelings into words. I may never. 

Work is busy. I took the last two weeks of the month off, and it still isn't enough time to get everything done. Granted, we were on vacation for almost one of the two weeks, so not much was able to get done then. It was a much needed vacation. The kids were able to get away. We had a much more successful flight this time than the first time we flew with kids. I haven't been able to write about that in four years because of how triggered it made me for the longest time. 

My daughter was one. We were flying to see friends moving halfway across the world. It was my first time meeting her two children and her first time meeting my husband and only child (at the time). The flight was delayed so she fell asleep at the airport instead of during takeoff like I had anticipated. Strike one. On the plane, an elderly woman had taken our seats so we sat in the seats across the aisle. I proceeded to wipe down the seats, trays, window area, and then a flight attendant came over. She told us we couldn't sit in the Exit Row with an infant. Of course....of course....and when we told her where our actual seats were, she didn't ask the elderly woman to move, because who does that? It's rude! So instead, the lady sitting in front of us offered to trade her seat with our row. 

So we ended up sitting in different seats than we'd originally purchased, and I did not wipe them down because I was too flustered from all the shifting.

After take-off, I went to give my daughter a sip of her water, completely forgetting that bottles pressurize with the elevation change. Water came shooting out of her bottle through the pop-up straw and splashed some to the people sitting in front of us. The lady completely flipped out that her iPad was splashed with water and almost ruined and basically ruined the rest of the flight for us. Every time after that when I put the tray up or down, she'd turn around and glare. She chatted with the elderly man sitting next to her and he did the same. When I bent down to try and retrieve something from my backpack to calm my child down, he glared because he couldn't stand the pressure for 10 seconds for me to retrieve something. 

At least one of them was Canadian. Canadians are known to be kind and generous and forgiving. Not this one. Canadians are people just like any other nationality and they can be real PITA too. Look at the person. Not the label. 

I was too nice then. I'm also not the fastest thinker when I'm anxious or stressed or under pressure. But if I had the nerve or if it ever happened again, I'd give her a mouthful. 

You think I'm excited about flying with a one year old? You think I wanted to sit behind you on this plane? You think I want the plane to be this squished and the seats so close together that I have to push on the seat in front of me just so I can bend over in a way to retrieve something to try and help your comfort on this plane so my child isn't going nuts or being loud? My daughter feels exactly the same way you do right now. But she's one. You on the other hand are a grown adult who should be able to control feelings and think for someone else. You used to be my daughter's age. What would you do if you saw someone glare at your mother like that? Immaturity is only acceptable when you are not expected to know any better. I think you'd lose to my one year old. 

I'm still triggered thinking about that incident. Sometimes I wish my memory weren't so vivid. 

My kids did really amazing on their plane rides this month. Yes, I have a five and three year old now, so the expectations are a little different, but both of them did really well. The flight there was the best it could have been. Quiet kids. No crying. No screaming. No noise basically. The flight back was a little rougher as my three-year-old was over tired and he cried for a bit. But people were understanding. Nobody said anything or glared or gave us stares. Or maybe they did and I didn't see it, but ignorance is bliss. 

***

We are a family of four. We have a three and five year old. Not too far off. We've gone shopping there many times as a family. I've gone shopping there myself since I was a teenager. I don't think I can ever go back. I couldn't sleep for days after it happened. Two days after, I broke out in hives all over with swollen hands. At first, I thought it was stress. But it kept getting worse. I was on antibiotics that week. After 36 hours, I went to an urgent care to get it looked at. He told me it looked like an allergic reaction to the medication. We switched medication and the rash started to subside. My body returned back to normal, or as normal as I could feel physically. But mentally? It's still there. 

The week after it happened, we ran errands as a family. We went to Old Navy. We went to a mall. We went to a restaurant. At one point, I checked my phone and saw a notification of a message regarding a shooting. I thought it was another one. Then I clicked in and saw it was 6 days old. The immediate panic went away. But the residual feelings did not. They still haven't. 

It actually occurred to me when I was on vacation, I shouldn't feel as afraid walking around in this state. Because their laws were different. I should actually feel safer, more relieved, to be here than I do at home. Isn't that weird? I've never thought in my adult life I'd come across feeling safer somewhere which wasn't where I called home, but I did. And then it hit me. During the year I moved to a different country and lived by myself, never once did I have fears like this. Fears of getting mugged by thieves? Sure. Being abducted? Maybe. But being shot openly in broad daylight doing mundane everyday tasks? Never. 

I was reading about one of the shooting victims who didn't die. He said God had plans for him and that's why he survived the shooting. I'm glad he thinks that way, and I think he should think that way, but what about everyone else who didn't survive? Was that God's plan, too? It is so hard for me as someone who believes in God to answer yes to that question. I don't want to answer yes to that question. I want to kick and scream and yell at God for letting it happen. I have a three year old. 

And then I have to remind myself. Vermeer's painting Girl With a Pearl Earring depicts a young woman with a light-skinned face. I remember the light-skinned face by memory. But Vermeer used dark paint on her face as well. Why is that? 

Her face has a shadow. And we don't know until we see the whole painting. 

Branches and Roots

Last year was arguably one of the hardest years of my life. I experienced things I never thought I would. I testified in court. I wrote letters to the county jail. I went to a prison to visit an inmate. Yeah, the city in Texas that's famous for their penitentiary? Most people just drive down 45 and pass the wire fence and bright lights. That's not even where the actual prison is. The actual prison is in the middle of downtown Huntsville. And I've been there. 

Why did I do all this? Because I know without a doubt this person is innocent of the crime. I can't directly change the circumstance, but I can do my part in being a friend, and in loving the people who are affected.

When this happened, I had a vision to commission an artwork. In some ways, I wanted the artwork to be commemorative. In other ways, I wanted it to be a beautiful piece of art for people to find their own story. But I wanted a very specific image. I wanted to see trees intertwined in the branches to where you could not see where one tree ended and the second tree began. But I wanted the focus to be on the intertwined-ness of the trees. No fancy leaves or flowers. I wanted to see the branches touch each other and merge into one. 

I explained this vision to my friend who happens to be an artist. I asked if she could make it happen. She showed me some drafts and we molded this idea of mine into reality. She was the one who actually told me that trees begin to share roots over time as they grow and share each other's space. 

Somewhere from the time this vision of mine was born, my children and I went to the library and found this book: Apple and Magnolia. 

I have a little secret. I've always judged books by their covers. I love seeing beautiful covers. It makes me more excited and generally more happy to open the book and want to read it. This children's book drew me in. I love the way the trees are illustrated with a youthful, fluffy look. I love that the title of the book is written in rainbow letters. And the thin piece of yarn twirled through the two trees gives it a dainty elegance. I had no idea what the book was about, I just saw the cover and wanted to check it out.

I took it home and read it. I can't remember if the first time I read it was with my children or if I just read it myself. Sometimes I do that...just read the books I check out for my children by myself. This book illustrated the idea I had for the intertwined trees perfectly. I don't want to spoil the book as it's a really special story, but it involves the idea of trees helping each other grow. 

When someone helps us, we automatically think, we need to repay the person who helped us. But what if that person is not in need of help? Why not redirect the help we want to give to someone else who needs it? I think this idea should be more widespread. Instead of limiting the assistance to a circular loop, why not spread it out further? 

I was and still am very impressed with the way my commission turned out. The way she twisted the fabric in the branches as she stitched added a lovely texture to the piece. She even outlined the shadows of the tree roots and how they merge with the trees beside them. I'm so glad she's moved closer and I was able to visit her last Christmas. You can check out the rest of her work at her site. 

This year has proven no easier than last year. I still feel spread thin most weeks. But there's a strange joy in knowing I am linking my branches and growing my roots into other trees. It's how we grow stronger.

Eight is Great!

We are celebrating anniversary number eight. Actually, we celebrated already a few days early. But wow, I'm still a bit in shock it's actually been eight years. Eight is my favorite number. It just worked out we got married in August which is month number eight. Golden anniversary? Let's just call it that, because two was...well, too early. I don't even remember anniversary number two, or the other seven for that fact. I do remember one was spent in an airport. I think that may have been number two....

We went big this year. we paid for a babysitter for the entire day, dropped our kids off, and went off on our adventure. 

No kids or car seats in the back 😱

We started off with lunch at Korean bbq. We've done Korean bbq once with children, and let me tell you, if it weren't for the other people we were at dinner with, it would not have been enjoyable at all. Constantly moving breakables and spillables away from tiny hands is a tiring task. This time, we got to do it without kids. Amazing!

I enjoy the meat a lot, but that's not my favorite. 😏

After stuffing our faces for nearly two hours and eating at least 4-5 pounds of food, we went downtown to see the DMA. I remember going to the DMA numerous times growing up as a child and teenager, but I never felt like I fully enjoyed it. There were exhibits I still remember to this day which were memorable, but for the most part, it just felt like walking through a giant building "observing."

I enjoyed our visit this time much more. I even came across a painting painted on our anniversary....just 95 years prior! The exhibit actually pointed out the date in the lower right hand corner. But I happened to see it in the painting itself first before reading the card. I'd like to attribute it to fate to discover this little gem, but in all honesty, I think it's because that's the corner of the painting which hit eye-level when I was standing relatively close to it. 😆

I enjoyed reading the descriptions of the artwork a lot more than I used to. Of course an important part of art involves simply looking at it, but the descriptions provide a nice framework which influences the way you look at it. I appreciate that particular aspect more now. It comes with age, go figure.

We stopped by again at the creative station at the museum. We first came across this section about five years ago when they provided some simple materials and let you construct your own sculpture. This time, we went again and created a few more masterpieces. Try guessing the names of our sculptures and who made which!

After we finished our time at the museum, we walked over to the restaurant for dinner. The last time we made this walk was February of 2017 with much nicer weather. Although a hot July day, it didn't feel terrible. Or I just had really good company which made me not notice the heat. But I did notice the naked mannequins at Stanley Korshak 

Love the color scheme artwork. Disappointed not to see more dresses.

We made it to Uchi for happy hour only to realize we didn't make a reservation and their waitlist was quite long since it was Saturday afternoon. Clearly it's been a really, really, REALLY long time since we've stepped into a fine-dining establishment. Oops. We figured we'd wait anyway since we were already at the restaurant, we didn't have other plans, and we had a babysitter so we could afford to sit around and wait without fussy children. We ended up waiting nearly 1.5 hours, ha. It actually didn't feel that long because they served us small appetizer samples and water, and we people-watched from the restaurant lobby. I was newly informed on the newest fashion trend in dresses because I saw about 6-8 women wearing the same style of dress. We watched countless people with no reservations leave after hearing how long the waitlist was going to be. And we watched a couple leave almost yelling at each other after they finished their meal. That was strange. I'm glad that wasn't us after hearing how long the wait was going to be. Don't sweat the small stuff. More on this tomorrow...

They ended up getting us seated right as happy hour was coming to an end, but the waiter let us order off the menu anyway. Really delicious, as we expected. 

This was our second time eating at the restaurant, the first being five and a half years ago. It was as enjoyable as we remembered it to be. Maybe we'll be back in another five years. 

I had a lot of fun spending an entire day with just one person, and an adult for that matter. I didn't grow up with the mentality that paying someone to watch your children while you go out and enjoy yourself and spend even more money was worthwhile. But you know, it really is. We won't be doing this every weekend by far, but every now and then, it's a worthy splurge for sanity and some fun. 

Cheers to more years! 🥂

Mid Year Check-In

At the beginning of the new year, I wrote a post with a few goals I wanted to accomplish. It's my version of a "New Year's Resolution." Well, Unfortunately for most people, 2020 has turned out to be one terrible year. You can read about my take on the terrible twos here, more for comedic relief than real talk. 

A whole six months has gone by. I can't tell you half of what I did in these six months, But I know the time has gone by because:

• I'm not pregnant anymore
• I have a second child
• There are more gray hairs on my head (I think...I'm not really counting...)

I started the year with three general "goals" I wanted to accomplish. 

1. Finish my cross-stitch
2. Find a new work-life balance
3. Keep my sanity

1. Finish My Cross-Stitch

I did! I finished my cross-stitch. I put in extra hours early this year, stitching at night, but I didn’t finish it before he was born. Somehow, after my son was born, I found time here and there to finish! It took me about three and a half years, but I finished it on June 28, 2020. This is my second large-scale cross-stitch that I've finished. Once again, the irony is that when I purchased this cross-stitch, I was living in China and single. When I finished it, I was living in the USA, married, with two kids two and under.

Originally, I bought this cross-stitch with a goal of finishing it before we had kids. That didn't happen. So then, I wanted to finish it before we were done having kids. That didn't happen either...but to my own credit, I only missed that goal by about three months.

Here it is!

Something often overlooked about cross-stitches is actually the back. If you enter a cross-stitch into a county fair or contest, they actually judge you more on the back than the front. Why is that? The back tells about the journey. Anyone can come up with a nice looking design on the front, but it takes dedication and patience to have a beautiful cross-stitch back.

So what is it about this journey that's so important? 

1. No Knots - cross stitching doesn't involve tying any knots. The ends of each thread are secured by looping your stitches on top of the ends. Every time you start a new thread, it must be secured in this way. 
2. Reaching over vs. starting new - I don't know if there's a technical term for this. If anyone's savvy enough in cross-stitch terminology, please let me know! But this is where instead of cutting the thread and starting in a new location, you take your thread from your last ending point and reach across the canvas to start it in a new location, therefore resulting in a very long piece of thread traveling on the back. It makes the back look messy and sloppy.
3. Consistency - The Xs on the front need to be crossed the exact same way in order to appear consistent and neat. This means if you stitch the bottom left to top right first, it has to be stitched first on every single X. When done correctly, the stitches on the back will all appear to be in the same direction instead of alternating vertical and horizontal stitches. 

Is it obvious to tell if someone's taken their time and cross-stitched the correct way? Yes. If you know what you're looking for, it's extremely obvious. One of the most telling signs is that the back of your cross-stitch should look exactly like the front.

Here's my back:

I have to say, I did a really nice job on this cross-stitch. I've been sloppy on previous ones in the past and learned the hard way, hence how I've been able to come up with my mental list of "what it takes to have a good cross-stitch." The design itself is not a difficult one, especially not compared to the last one I finished, but it fits perfectly for why I wanted to finish it: it's for my children. 

2. Find a New Work-Life Balance. 

I have been able to find a new work-life balance. In doing so, I've cut my students in half, I limit the hours I work, and I'm only teaching online right now. For most of this, I have to thank coronavirus actually. If the virus didn't exist, I would have pressured myself into taking all my students back which would be 12+ hours of teaching a week in five days. Add that onto taking care of my kids during the day while my husband was working as well as breastfeeding, or attempting to breastfeed my son, and that results in one crazy mom. 

I'll never forget the day I put my pump on the kitchen counter and pumped during my 30 minute break in between two lessons while cooking spaghetti on the stove for dinner at the same time after my daughter was born. I don't even know where she was. I think my husband was watching her. 

I'll be eternally grateful for coronavirus that I will not have to do that with my son this time around. But that's pretty much the only reason why I'm grateful for this virus. For everything else, it's ruined a lot of plans, trips, outings, and life in general. 

3. Keep my Sanity

As mentioned above, this virus has helped me to keep my sanity in certain ways. In others? Not so much. It's been a new learning curve to figure out how to plan grocery trips now and be intentional about what I buy. I've had to train my daughter into a daily routine/schedule that doesn't involve going on playdates or wandering stores for fun. But we've found other things that she has enjoyed during these last three months of staying at home and staying out of public places, which has also kept us from going crazy ourselves: going on bike rides in the bike trailer, swinging in our front lawn and "blasting off", swinging in our hammock, watching our neighbors mow and trim their lawns, going swimming in our neighbor's pool, watching bunnies and squirrels, digging in our flower beds which don't have flowers, and learning how to be a big sister, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. 

Overall, I think the transition to having two kids while maintaining both of our jobs and general lifestyle has been pretty smooth. The kids have kept me busy during all this staying at home, and to be honest, it's been nice. I wonder to myself what quarantine with no kids would have been like. I think I would have had a lot more time to do the things I wanted to do and no will to do them. Chances are, I would have sat at home, watched a lot of TV, or spent a lot of money shopping online, neither of which I have time to do now.

I hope despite all the terribleness this year has brought for many of us, you've been able to find some silver linings to reach some goals or discover something new for yourself. 

Here's to the second half of 2020. 

Bathroom: 1983

I channeled my inner artist this weekend and created a conceptual art installation entitled Bathroom:1983

Materials: slate. porcelain. ceramic. brass. glass. wood. metal. paper. plaster. concrete. sand.

In this installation, approximately 1000 pounds of material are strategically placed alongside the curb to display an original 1983 bathroom. The materials are placed along the curb in disarray to illustrate a transition to the year 2017. The toilet tank itself has the year 1983 etched on the inside for proof of age. In 1983, the materials for this bathroom would have been top of the line, luxury pieces. In current times, this fashion belongs out on the curb to be hauled away.

This limited engagement piece will be on display until 7 am on Tuesday, July 25th. You don't want to miss it!






In all seriousness, we collectively demolished and hauled to the curb over 4x our combined body weight in mass. Definitely one of our largest projects to undertake.

Stay tuned for future updates and the next art piece ;)

Friday Afternoon DIY

The majority of my students had spring break this week, but I still taught every day except today. I woke up and started my day as usual: did some things around the house, practiced some piano, got organized, and ate lunch. Seeing as I had the entire afternoon open and I hadn't left the house for "fun" in almost two whole days, I was itching to go somewhere.

This was something I didn't quite anticipate feeling nearly as much as I have felt in these last months since quitting my full-time job to work from home. (And I probably would not feel the same way if there were piles and piles of things to do around the house.) But I was dying to just get out and go somewhere, usually shopping - grocery, music books, clothes, miscellaneous errands - they're all the same to me. I just wanted to get out.

So after finishing all my "work" for the day, I allowed myself to indulge in a new craft endeavor I wanted to experiment with. I made a list of the places I was going to go and the items I needed. I had planned on stopping by Joann's, Hobby Lobby, and then Michael's for three different items. I usually try to consolidate as much as possible, but when these stores limit you to one coupon per transaction per person per day, it's worth going to three separate stores to use three separate coupons when they're all within the same street block of each other. I'm not going to reveal what items I was purchasing so the next few paragraphs are going to sound very vague, but I'm doing that on purpose.

I got to Joann's and looked for item #1. They didn't have it. Online it said they had three in stock. Clearly the stock was not there and the website not updated. Big sigh. I ended up buying item #3 intended for Michael's because it was on sale and a better price than Michael's. I got back into my car, drove down the street about 2 minutes to Hobby Lobby. Instead of buying item #2 intended for Hobby Lobby, I ended up using my coupon to buy item #1.

Once again, I got back into my car, crossed the street, and went to Michael's. Of course, I was supposed to get item #3 at Michael's, but I had already purchased it. So instead, I looked for item #2, intended for Hobby Lobby, which I couldn't buy because I had already used my coupon and wasn't going to spend more on it than I had to. Well, turns out Michael's doesn't carry item #2, and the most similar item they did carry was almost 3x the price at Hobby Lobby. I was not pleased and left without completing my trifecta of craft supplies.

I debated going back to Hobby Lobby again and just seeing if they'd let me use a coupon again to buy item #2. After all, I had left the store, drove to a different location, and then returned. However, as much as I think the people at Hobby Lobby would have let me use the coupon anyway, I turned the other way and went home.

Having arrived home without the three necessary items to complete my craft, I couldn't make any progress on that at all. So instead, I decided to start (and finish!) another craft. I had seen a piece of wall decor at Hobby Lobby as I walked in done in this style which refreshed my memory of having wanted to try it myself. After grabbing my things, but before checking out, I stopped by and inspected it a bit just to see how it was made. Mentally, I created a step-by-step instruction list on how I would go about doing it.

Since I came home missing one item for my originally intended craft, I switched gears and worked on this other DIY project inspired by the one I saw at Hobby Lobby. I had all the necessary materials since they were leftovers from previous projects.

Materials:

- one piece of MDF board or wood board cut to desired size - we had leftovers from building some shelves a year ago.
- nails - they don't have to be extremely long, but they should be nails and not screws. I used some finishing nails we picked up at a garage sale for cheap. I think the whole box was 25 cents.
- paint - we had paint Jonathan picked up one day after work which I've used for previous art projects.
- string of various colors (multiple strands of thread or a skinny yarn work well) - these were leftovers from my giant cross-stitch.
- hammer
- scissors
- pen or pencil
- scrap paper

Steps:

1. Paint your MDF board or wood to desired color. Let paint dry and add additional coats as necessary following the instructions on the can.**
2. Using a piece of scrap paper, sketch out your desired shape and then cut out with scissors.
3. Place the paper on top of your wood or MDF board in the position you want.
4. Carefully using the hammer, put nails in around the paper to create the outline of your shape. Nails should be spaced about a 1/2 inch apart. They can be closer or further apart depending on your discretion. (You can wear gloves and safety glasses if desired, but I didn't because this was very tame compared to other projects we've done. I would recommend the gloves if you're a neat freak because the nails do tend to wear off their coating onto your fingers so if you don't want black/grey fingers after, wear gloves.)
5. Remove the scrap paper after you're done placing nails around the outline. 
6. Take string of various colors and wrap around the nails, tying knots to secure once you've placed it the way you want. This is actually the most time consuming step. It took me about 20 minutes to put the nails in and then about an hour to tie all the string on the way I wanted. 

**Note: I had my MDF board pre-painted from another previous project so I didn't have to wait for paint to dry. Obviously if you start from scratch, it'll probably be a 2-3 day  project because you'll have to wait for the paint. 

I did a very simple heart design and chose to lay out my string in a rainbow fashion going from the warmer colors into the cooler colors. I arranged it like this partly because these are the colors I had and so I was limited with what was leftover from my cross-stitch. 

So there you have it. My Friday afternoon (back up plan) DIY project. :) I see these all the time being sold at stores for decor for $10-$30 dollars depending on what it is. It's really not that hard and depending on what you have on hand, the cost could be little to nothing.

Final cost : $0. Gotta love leftovers :)

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. ;)

Garage Art

Who's lucky enough to have a husband who's willing to let his wife compromise his coveted garage walls? Me. :) Because they're actually not his coveted garage walls.

He came home 45 minutes late one evening after work because he saw a Craigslist post for free paint on his way home and took a detour to go get it. The guy who was giving them away had used them for art, probably as a side hobby. But he was moving and wasn't going to take it all with him. So of course, my husband went and picked up about 20 gallons of paint. The guy said it was old, but also said some of it was probably still good, so we went with it.

This paint sat in our garage for quite a few months, and lucky for us, we have a rather large garage so this wasn't really taking up that much of our storage space. Over time, we realized that some of the colors we actually needed....weren't the ones which we had. After going to the store and buying two gallons of discounted, mis-tint paint on our own, we decided we probably didn't need the 20 gallons of paint. I do have to say though, the two gallons we bought were exterior paint and so those are harder to come by for free, and since we were painting part of the exterior of our house, we were more picky on color choices.

The husband proposed we just donate all the paint or give it away, but I wanted to do something fun with it. So he let me paint the garage since the inside of our house is pretty much done the way we want.

We started talking about ideas of what to paint. We joked about painting mountains and oceans on our garage walls so we would have some scenic adventures at our fingertips, but let's be real here. Our artistic skills aren't good enough to cover multiple large scale walls. So instead, I looked for some more practical solutions. This website gave us some really good inspiration.

Our first art project didn't quite turn out to what it was supposed to.

Humble beginnings of the first art piece.

The finished product!

So these before and after pictures seem to be in sequential order of each other....but there was quite a disaster that happened in between. I don't have a picture documenting it because I was too in shock. After painting with all the paint tape lines there, I prepared to pull the tape off, because as an experienced painter, I know that you're supposed to remove the tape while the paint is still wet so you don't risk the paint sticking to the tape after it dries.

Well, I pulled off the paint anyways. Yes, I really did. The whole top third of my artwork came down with the tape. Somehow, the tape had stuck on so strongly, (or the top layer of paint was so worn,) that it removed the whole top layer, revealing perfectly smooth, brown drywall. Of course, that's not what I wanted to see. With the top third of my artwork now exposed drywall and the bottom two-thirds still intact, I was freaking out.

After regaining my composure and figuring out how to amend this issue, I quickly found some light colored paint to match the wall color and repaint the exposed the drywall. After that dried, I taped the same design to the top portion of the artwork and finished painting it for a second time. If you look really closely, you'll actually see that the two are not exactly the same. The finished artwork is done slightly differently than the first taping even though it is modeled in the same fashion.

Needless to say, I was very hesitant to continue painting the walls of my garage after this. What if every piece of artwork I painted was going to peel off with the tape? There was definitely no reason in putting myself through it a second time.

Well, I still wanted to paint fun designs like #11 from the inspiration website, so I did. And this one turned out much better, but I ran into a different problem.

After taping up the design, I began painting each wedge. I started with my lightest color and added darker paint to mix in to create the various shades. After I mixed it pretty dark, I decided to open the cans of darker paint and just paint those colors straight instead of mixing. However, when I opened up the can of dark blue that I wanted to use, it had gone bad. Paint smell + sour smell = bad paint. I really wanted to continue trudging through...and then decided it really wasn't worth it. So that can of paint went into the bad pile.

I had a second can of dark paint so I opened it up and tried to use it. Nope. Same smell, maybe even more potent. Those were definitely bad, hence, the new dilemma I had created for myself halfway through starting the project. I originally thought I would have five cans of blue paint to use and mix. Now, I was down to three, and the two that were taken out were my darkest ones. What was I going to do?

I just had to get really creative with my three cans of paint and my well-learned color mixing skills. I think I did fairly well.

I made 10 colors out of 3!

There's still a couple other walls that I want to fill, and I know for sure one of them is going to peel, so I will definitely be scraping that wall clean first before I paint. There's also a can of hot pink paint that I really want to use, you know, since my husband won't let me put it on the walls of our bedroom ;)

Oh, and design inspiration #33 is definitely happening. We have the blue and the yellow. we just need some red....!