We have a blank kitchen wall. We had done nothing to that space as we had thoughts of buying a small shelf there, which we never did for the past one year.I tried convincing Sree that we would hang some wall art on it, now that its almost a year and I know we won't end up buying any wall unit there. He told me to create another painting or so to put up there, since I already had the canvas for it ( I am sure he thought he will save some money here). This was sometime back, but then when I found some free time on one of the weekends, I started looking around for something to paint.
I stumbled across this link
http://sparklepantsgirl.com/2011/09/falling-leaves/
I liked the idea behind this and since fall was soon coming, I decided I'll create something similar.
I was always fascinated by fall colors - the yellows, greens , oranges and I was sure, I did not want to do anything completely white as done in the above link, as it just does not suit my imagination regarding fall leaves.
So off I went to Michaels one day and got the stuff required. I also wanted to improvise a bit to add my touch so bought some brick like tiles from Lowe's as well.
After a hectic few weeks at work, I finally got a Sunday completely free, so I decided to start on the project. I told Sree I would need his help to cut out the leaves that I drew.
We went off to work around 11 in the morning and I started off with tracing out the leaves onto the foam sheets. I found different kinds of leaves to trace out. It was very strenuous for Sree to cut these with scissors first, and then I gave him the idea to use a small knife in the tool kit to carve these out. That actually worked and he became much faster. After all leaves were cut out, we arranged the boards on the wall to get an idea of how we want to go about this. I wanted to arrange this in a different way which is more symmetric but Sree convinced me to go random here and he placed the boards on.
Below is the initial setting
Then I went about coloring the leaves. I just randomly colored using the same brush 90% of the time. I did not care about cleaning the brush completely because you really don't need to worry too much about the colors getting mixed and resulting in different shades. Because that was the whole point.
Sree joined after a while and it was funny to see him paint actually. He was so carefully doing it like a kid trying to create the most perfect leaf. He totally enjoyed this and was very proud of the leaves he did.
We took down the canvases and laid them flat and were randomly throwing down the leaves onto them and where ever they fell, we just stuck them with a cello tape. The moment we start thinking and doing this, the whole randomness just goes off and we end up doing it symmetrically. Guess that is how your minds are tuned.
We kept the boards on the wall after the leaves were stuck and I immediately knew I did not want the white background, also it looked kinda odd. So we added more boards brought them closer to see if that would look better, and we felt it did.
I had no patience to sit and paint all the canvases a background shade, so the easiest solution was to run to Lowe's and get spray paint. We got a dull yellow shade and spray painted all the canvases. It took just 10 minutes for the entire process and I had no complaints about how the canvases turned out.
I aligned all the canvases on the wall with a leveler. This was the toughest part( during this time Sree conveniently took his power nap for the day). Its very frustrating to level all the canvases and it took a good 20-30 minutes or so.
After this, me and Sree created more leaves as they were required and also stuck some backsplash tiles that I got from Lowe's to the bottom one to depict "ground"
You can find the pics below
After the final leaves were painted, we just randomly placed the leaves on the boards again. We tried our best to not to think at all to make this as random as possible. I have an eye for symmetry so Sree had to remind me multiple times not to look at symmetry. Finally we completed it and stood there staring at what we created and immediately I started having second thoughts. First thing was I could not accept the multiple shades going on and thought I should have just stuck to one shade of leaves. Secondly, I thought if the canvases had to be symmetric and also if the leaves should be smaller . Sree was so exhausted, he was in no mood to judge anything, and he just loved the way things came about.
We took a snap next to it, and off we went to sleep.
In the morning, I stared at it more, and I was still not convinced. Later in the evening, when the sun was shining through I just kept looking at it and realized that whatever it was I just loved the whole process of doing this with Sree and that it just need not be perfect. It can be just what it is.And the whole art just depicts what really fall is - Random!!!
I might still end up playing around with the leaves here and there, and even taking out few and replacing with few others and changing around the boards a little, and that is just me and that is the idea behind creating something on your own.
I am extremely happy that one day was spent exactly like I wanted to spend it. Working together with Sree on something and whole process was very relaxing and rewarding. It was fun!
A pic taken in the evening sun
I stumbled across this link
http://sparklepantsgirl.com/2011/09/falling-leaves/
I liked the idea behind this and since fall was soon coming, I decided I'll create something similar.
I was always fascinated by fall colors - the yellows, greens , oranges and I was sure, I did not want to do anything completely white as done in the above link, as it just does not suit my imagination regarding fall leaves.
So off I went to Michaels one day and got the stuff required. I also wanted to improvise a bit to add my touch so bought some brick like tiles from Lowe's as well.
After a hectic few weeks at work, I finally got a Sunday completely free, so I decided to start on the project. I told Sree I would need his help to cut out the leaves that I drew.
We went off to work around 11 in the morning and I started off with tracing out the leaves onto the foam sheets. I found different kinds of leaves to trace out. It was very strenuous for Sree to cut these with scissors first, and then I gave him the idea to use a small knife in the tool kit to carve these out. That actually worked and he became much faster. After all leaves were cut out, we arranged the boards on the wall to get an idea of how we want to go about this. I wanted to arrange this in a different way which is more symmetric but Sree convinced me to go random here and he placed the boards on.
Below is the initial setting
 |
| The beginning |
Then I went about coloring the leaves. I just randomly colored using the same brush 90% of the time. I did not care about cleaning the brush completely because you really don't need to worry too much about the colors getting mixed and resulting in different shades. Because that was the whole point.
Sree joined after a while and it was funny to see him paint actually. He was so carefully doing it like a kid trying to create the most perfect leaf. He totally enjoyed this and was very proud of the leaves he did.
We took down the canvases and laid them flat and were randomly throwing down the leaves onto them and where ever they fell, we just stuck them with a cello tape. The moment we start thinking and doing this, the whole randomness just goes off and we end up doing it symmetrically. Guess that is how your minds are tuned.
 |
| Random drops! |
We kept the boards on the wall after the leaves were stuck and I immediately knew I did not want the white background, also it looked kinda odd. So we added more boards brought them closer to see if that would look better, and we felt it did.
I had no patience to sit and paint all the canvases a background shade, so the easiest solution was to run to Lowe's and get spray paint. We got a dull yellow shade and spray painted all the canvases. It took just 10 minutes for the entire process and I had no complaints about how the canvases turned out.
I aligned all the canvases on the wall with a leveler. This was the toughest part( during this time Sree conveniently took his power nap for the day). Its very frustrating to level all the canvases and it took a good 20-30 minutes or so.
After this, me and Sree created more leaves as they were required and also stuck some backsplash tiles that I got from Lowe's to the bottom one to depict "ground"
You can find the pics below
 |
| Painting the last set of leaves |
 |
| The process |
 |
| I cut all of these and many more! |
After the final leaves were painted, we just randomly placed the leaves on the boards again. We tried our best to not to think at all to make this as random as possible. I have an eye for symmetry so Sree had to remind me multiple times not to look at symmetry. Finally we completed it and stood there staring at what we created and immediately I started having second thoughts. First thing was I could not accept the multiple shades going on and thought I should have just stuck to one shade of leaves. Secondly, I thought if the canvases had to be symmetric and also if the leaves should be smaller . Sree was so exhausted, he was in no mood to judge anything, and he just loved the way things came about.
We took a snap next to it, and off we went to sleep.
 |
| capturing all the frames |
 |
| after the work... |
I might still end up playing around with the leaves here and there, and even taking out few and replacing with few others and changing around the boards a little, and that is just me and that is the idea behind creating something on your own.
I am extremely happy that one day was spent exactly like I wanted to spend it. Working together with Sree on something and whole process was very relaxing and rewarding. It was fun!
A pic taken in the evening sun
 |
| Pic taken in the evening sun |
