Decorate Your Contemporary Family Room by Painting Fine Art

You may not be a sculptor and have the ability to make your own tree wall hangings, tropical wall sculptures or metal wall crosses. However, even if you don’t consider yourself to be a great artist, you can still paint beautiful fine art pieces for your contemporary living room. If you want to add the perfect personalized finishing touch to the room, it’s hard to beat art that you create yourself. If you’ve never attempted to paint fine art, these handy tips could be just what you need to get your creativity in gear.

Creating Abstract Art Pieces

If you feel you lack the necessary artistic talent to create a realistically styled painting, why not try creating an original abstract art piece? Abstract art styles can blend wonderfully with a contemporary decorating style, making abstract pieces the perfect addition to a modern family room. To make things easy, simply start out with a piece of purchased canvas board. Of course, you could also paint on almost any other surface if you desired. Use a pencil to lightly sketch your pattern onto the canvas. Practicing your design by first drawing it on a piece of paper is also a good idea. To keep things simple, draw geometric patterns, which usually work quite well as the overall design for an abstract piece. Once you’ve used a pencil to sketch your design onto the canvas board, use oil or acrylic artist paints to finish the piece.

Of course, if you’re feeling bold and artistic, you could also paint your design onto the canvas using a freehand style. Start by painting the canvas with a solid color of paint. When it’s dry, you can use sponges, brushes and other paint applicators to apply the paint colors. If you protect your work area, you can even splash and splatter the paint onto the board if the mood strikes you. Since there isn’t a specific way that art should be created, you can simply keep painting until you are happy with the finished look. Once you masterpiece has dried, frame it and hang on the family room wall.

Creating Realistic Art Pieces

Although you might feel that you don’t have enough artistic talent to create a realistic painting, it’s actually not as difficult as you might think. By using a simple “how-to” instruction book or by taking an art class, you could easily learn the basics of realistic painting. Many books have easy step-by-step instructions for specific paintings that you can follow. All you need to do is select a painting project that appeals to your artistic senses, collect your painting supplies, and get started. If you’ve never tried painting before, you might want to practice on some paper before painting on your canvas board. But, even if you are not thrilled with your first painting, you can just cover the painting with gesso, and try again after it is dry. In fact, reusing canvases for multiple paintings is a technique even the world’s greatest master and artists used, so you’ll be in good company.

If you find it difficult to sketch a realistic design, try using an overhead projector. Once you find a realistic scene that appeals to you, place it on the projector and reflect it onto the wall. Then, simply attach your canvas board to the wall and trace the projected image. You can then paint your work of art, using the original scene as a guide. The end result will be a beautifully realistic fine art piece that you can frame and hang on the family room wall.