Rewriting on the Wall
Remember this Fail It Yourself?
When I painted this canvas blue, it was the first time I’d ever bought a canvas, brushes, or paint. I’ve bought paint a few more times since, including spray paint, which I swore before buying this canvas that I’d never use again (a vow that I have broken time after time). Once, I bought gray spray paint to refresh a lamp that I bought at Goodwill, and one evening, for no particular reason, I decided to paint this canvas gray with the leftover spray paint. Then I wound some twine around it and stuck some paper leaves on the twine.
It looked like this.
I don’t remember when I did this, and I don’t remember how long it stayed. I never really loved it. It eventually came down, and I replaced it with some frames that I spray painted black (with paint left over from this project). At this point, I’m a pro at finding new uses for old paint, and it’s a wonder that I ever buy anything at all. You have no idea how many things in this house are the exact same color blue as my dresser. And when I finally refinish my craigslist-purchased campaign desk, it will most likely be stained the exact same color as my coffee table. Because this has all happened before and will happen again, you know.
Moving on, though...
I’ve never been a fan of word-based wall art. I don’t know why, but I suspect that it has something to do with it rarely saying what I want it to tell me. The solution to this is, of course, to Fail It Yourself. So when a particular quote from a particular TV show pops into my head while I am simultaneously thinking about what to do with my displaced gray canvas, I toss my distaste for wordy wall stuff out the window. After all, writing is rewriting, and it’s time to revise this canvas (again).
So, I mobilize the materials that I have on hand. Paper, a printer, a razor, a brush, and paint. I already have many shades of paint from which to choose, and I probably decide to go with yellow because I haven’t used it for a second project yet.
I use Gimp to figure out how big I want my letters to be (and what font), then print out those letters in Word. Then I cut them out, and then I tape them together into one big stencil.
At this point, I should stop. I should go buy poster board, or vellum, and probably some spray adhesive, and actually make this, like, a legitimate stencil. But I don’t. I could say I’m impatient, and I could say I’m lazy. Either way, half-assing it is just how I roll.
So I paint with the yellow paint, and it’s a little sloppy, but I neaten it up before it dries and it’s not too bad. But I don’t love the color. It’s too much…yellow. It’s not enough…neon.
To Michaels! I finally make a new purchase to complete this project: neon acrylic paint. After tax, we’re talking $0.75, which is an awesome price because my change is perfectly shaped for the laundry machine.
When I get home, I notice how much bigger the tube of neon yellow paint is than the other tube of yellow paint. I inspect the other differences to find out why, and notice that the yellow paint is fabric paint. This would make sense, since I bought it to make my mother hand-painted dish towels for her birthday. Also, it’s clearly evident from the label. Since I’m literate and ostensibly can read labels, I probably shouldn't make the same mistake twice. But I do. Ka is a wheel.
Anyway, I continue undeterred and paint over the fabric-paint yellow with the neon yellow. It takes four coats before I’m happy with the opacity of the neon. And then I rearrange the wire on the back, consult apartmenttherapy.com to remind myself how high to hang the thing (at least I've figured that out over the last two years), measure the wall, and find out that there’s already a hole from a previous picture-hanging project precisely where I want to hang it. Joy!
And with no further ado, the twice-revised canvas that just won’t quit…
Because a house is not a home until there’s a Deadwood quote on the wall. In neon yellow.
















