We love décor, be it the little spools of paint in the kitchen or the trinkets dripping from the cracks in the front door. We like color and patterns and shiny things that are a delight to see. But do we have to have a wall or section of wall where we can hang these decorative paintings to share with visitors and the rest of the family?
“Hanging art on the wall is not a new thing, but if you’ve never done it you’re missing so many great options. You can paint in the traditional style, using oil products, but with the right project, the right paint and a project that’s your own, you can turn that artsy wall into something truly unique.” explains Graham Shear.
Decorative painting can be found in homes of all types, from independent living to retirement homes to museums. Malls and department stores are always trying to find something to make the shelves and malls look a little more stylish and useful. Make your own decorative painting right in your home! Not the type you use to paint a canvas, fold a greeting card, or do a view from a book – decorative painting is where you can be creative.
hatred dates back to the use of paint in early Egypt, where an Egyptian painter painted the diseased body of a dead animal. Graham Shear tells how “The painting was a symbol of the freedom of the soul to be true to their inner self and it spread throughout history as a symbol of the recently dead experience – death, rebirth, and everlasting life. The sacredness of the process is even honored in the modern world.”
You probably use decorative painting to decorate the living space, if you have a home to yourself or someone else. You can add a favorite piece from a film to brighten the walls of a study or from a favorite singer to the shower in your bathroom. Or you might use decorative painting as a way to keep a sick loved one company for long periods of time, as with the slowly healing art of sympathetic design. Decorative painting has even been used to comfort our men and women in war, from the Civil War to today’s conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The ideas to use can and do go on and on. Colors, techniques, and canvases are available to every type of decorator. The possibilities are limitless. Maybe you’d like to try your hand at creating an entire work of art, using oils or other materials. Maybe you’d like to paint a scene from a book, or create a scene from a beloved story that would be especially dear to your heart. Or just do an abstract painting in the style of an older friend that you haven’t seen in years.
And don’t limit your ideas for decorative painting to simply looking at a scene. You can make your own decorative painting to suit your need. Roughly speaking, there are three main things that I consider essential for any wall or apartment or studio. They are a work surface, brushes, and a canvas. A full-length artist’s worktop whichever you choose, is well worth the effort of buying it. A small student canvas in the style of a 16th-century BEN Martins is a quick and easy way to get started. And the brushes that I like are easier and better to use with razor-sharp adjustable sheers.
Enamel coated steel wool (20- learnt specifics) do justice to small murals or groups of objects and are easy to use with a brush properly cleaned and set for minimum cleaning. They seem to not melt, don’t smudge and leave sticky residue on your walls. An entire book can be painted on the level of the left-hand edge of a fairly large canvas while left completely dry before scrubbing it with a wet chisel-point paintbrush – i.e., while the painting is still wet. Another trick is to paint from one side to the other on a vertical wood-grain, the book side facing up, and then it can be crumpled by hand and removed. That way your painting is done, the book enclosed, and it’s done to a degree, that the book is removed to admire! I draw with a chisel-point round pencil and a movable sponge in Acer lacquer finish.
Awe to the ceilings and add our VERY annoying the dynamics of the room before we finished these projects. We used a damp pad in the bottom of a five-gallon paint bucket, in order to disturb the adhesive on the floor to help reposition. Pre-school people find the damp pad to have a Cult of “Emotional Well-being”. You can buy it at school supply stores or prescribed by a doctor who sees and knows what it’s like.