As an art student, I have a ton of art supplies left over from old classes and projects and I never know what to do with all of it (shown to the right and bottom of the page). I hate the idea of wasting is so I figure there are two possibilities that I would enjoy. Either donating them or creating my own new pieces with whatever material I decide to put together. In my case I have lots of acrylic paint, canvases, markers, and stickers.
What I ended up deciding to do was paint three different sized canvases. One large, one medium, and one small. I unfortunately do not have the actual sizes to these canvases so I call them small, medium, and large, but you get the idea. I first painted all three canvases with a goldish-brown color as a base because it was one of my favorites that I had left over. Then, I painted the large canvas with the first thing that came to mind that I could create with a pattern which was by using a palette knife to create ridge-like clumps of paint that look similar to leaves and a few white and blue stripes in the bottom corner. After that I moved onto the small canvas and decided to stick multiple stickers on it in an artistically organized fashion with some silver paint marker spots.
Once I did this I realized that I chose stickers that had a similar color theme to the paint on the larger canvas, so then I decided to keep all three canvases within the same color palette. Once I made this decision I added stickers to the medium canvas in addition to a similar leaf like pattern from the large canvas. I did not want to overcrowd any of the canvases so I tried to keep it as simple as possible while also being interesting to the eye. When I finally finished the medium canvas I went back to the large one and added some stickers in the same manner as the other two canvases. I did not originally include stickers on the large canvas because I didn’t know I was going to like the design but since I did, I chose to go back and add some. I am glad I added them because I enjoy the way all three canvases came out. I also did not originally plan to make all three with the same theme, only the same color base, but as I was creating the large piece I chose to make them all similar.
Whenever you find yourself in a place where you have extra materials, it will never hurt you as an artist to try new ways to figure out how to put the pieces together. This is what I usually like to try and do. You never know what you may create, and you never know what new techniques you may find and enjoy for future projects.
