Stick a Fork in Me, I'm... Indecisive?

This past weekend, I was flying solo. Alone. Singleton, yet again. The hubs was traveling for work, so Charlie and I had free reign of the house. I figured I should use my time wisely and A) watch some horrible chic flicks and b) do something creative. I certainly watched my fair share of awesomely bad films, and I also tried my hand at a little painting for our kitchen.

Here’s what I was dealing with beforehand. When we moved in, we had to plop one of our college-esque Rothko prints on this wall since the genius that built our house decided to put a monstrous circuit breaker smack dab in the middle of this wall. I felt like it was time to move on from the quintessential student poster (hey, at least it’s framed!) but I didn’t want to spend serious dough on a large piece of artwork. So, I decided to try my hand at painting. You may remember my attempt at a simple, graphic painting a while back, but this one was a bit of a challenge since I am not a painter. AT ALL. Not even a little bit. I always had to trace my people in my design school perspectives because I’m absolutely TERRIBLE at making things look realistic. Except for furniture and architectural details. That I can handle.

I picked up a 24 x 36 canvas from my local Michael’s and slapped on some cool blue paint that we had leftover from the guest bathroom reno. I also picked up some gray, black and white craft paint, and pulled out some paint brushes I had leftover from the bike mural in my big sister’s nursery. I wanted to do something graphic and pop art-y, like the silverware painting David Bromstad did in a kitchen renovation I had seen on HGTV one day. Now, let me preface this again by saying I am not a painter and by no means David Bromstad. AT ALL. But hey, I figured I’d give it a shot while I had a weekend to kill.

I started out by taking a fork out of my silverware draw and measuring it to see the proportions I should be shooting for (prongs to handle, etc). I then took my trusty pencil and started sketching, all while taking some measurements to make sure my fork wasn’t completely wonky. As you can see, it took a bit of sketching to get the shape I thought was acceptable. I’m not sure if the pencil sketch method is the best way to go, but it worked for me in this instance.

I then took my trusty $0.99 craft paint and filled in my fork sketch with a cool gray paint (cool gray to go along with my cool blue background paint). The gray had a little hint of green in it as well, so I knew it would go nicely with our green wall paint in the kitchen. I then took my white and black paints and made a couple of different shades of gray to add some dimension to my (very sad) fork shape, giving it a bit of dimension. After that, all while referencing my real fork next to the canvas, I added a few highlights with the black and white paint to add a little pop to my gray blob of a fork. I had to let the paint dry between each of these steps so that the colors didn’t all blend together. Trial and error, people. Non-painter folk over here.

After the fork paint dried, I took some more of the blue wall paint and filled in the areas where my pencil sketching had gone amiss, covering up any evidence of disproportional fork shapes. I then hung it on the wall above Charlie’s food bowls and had a minor panic attack. What was I thinking? I’m not a painter! I waited until Scott got home to see if I was completely insane, and he very nicely commented that the prongs seemed a bit short for the fork. Shucks. Sure, it’s not the most realistic looking fork, but maybe I was going for whimsical (haha). Scott says it’s a bit contemporary for our home, but the more I look at our giant fork, the more it’s growing on me. What do you think? Give it to me straight here, Internet. Should I keep my attempt at a fork or wipe the slate clean and start over with something more abstract? Sound off!

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