Thursday, May 31, 2012

Minimalist Paintings

About a month ago, I set out a task to redo the kids rooms.  They were fairly plain, boring, and unorganized.  Furthermore, we are expecting our girls from Lincoln, Nebraska for the summer (they live with their mother).

Previously, we had our daughter in the larger of the two rooms and a majority of the toys.  In the smaller room, we had our son's huge loft bed and a cabinet holding a 37" TV.  We found that because his room at the TV, the kids would take all the toys into his already small room and make a huge mess of things.  When we asked them to clean up, they would stuff everything in his closet or in large bins.  Furthermore, our 3 1/2 year old daughter love to stay up late, past her bedtime playing with the toys in her room, since most of them were housed there.

We decided to switch the kids' rooms and give our daughter the smaller room.  We also set up the bunk bed in the new room in preparation for our daughters coming this summer.  This setup gave little room for toys, so the functionality of her room became just a bedroom.  In the larger room, we put Tristan's loft bed, the futon for seating under the loft bed, and wall mounted the TV.  We purchased some Trofast storage from IKEA (I love that store, by the way), a little table to act as a desk, and I went to town organizing the kids' toys. 

With the new set up, most of the toys tend to stay in our son's room (where the TV is), so we've dubbed his room the playroom.  In fact, the kids have been pretty good about keeping things cleaned up.  Organization, though, is another story.

Unfortunately, the walls in the rooms are bare, except for a few of their works of art drawn onto the walls.  I've wanted to do themed rooms for the kiddos for quite a while.  Never found the time and I really still don't have it.  Anyway, I asked my son what he wanted for his room and he opted for Star Wars.

We decided to purchase a few Star Wars things, like a Millenium Falcon and a few light sabers. But I needed stuff for his wall.  Fortunately, for my birthday, my husband got me some canvases, acrylic paints, and some brushes.  I did some searching online and found these minimalist paintings of a few Star Wars characters.  Then I went to work.

I traced the outlines using an old school projector a friend is letting me borrow.  It wasn't easy though, since the projected images weren't in focus.

  
Then with a little paint here and there, I worked on each one by one.
I did five in all: a Storm Trooper, R2D2, Yoda, C3PO, and Darth Vader.




They measure 16"x20"

Darth Vader is definitely one of my favorites.  I think this one and C3PO turned out the best.  They were also the most challenging.