Modern Textured Wall Art and Paintings

1. About this Class: Hi everyone. I'm Kelly from Cali Mac design and welcome to modern textured wall art. We are going to be transforming a blank Canvas today into a really awesome textured wall art piece. You can either go minimalist with your colors or you can have colors pop, like the one that I made. Here we go, we're going to be working on different techniques on how to build texture. We're gonna be going over from beginning to end, how to make this project and how to make something that is unique to you. You can make as many as you'd like. I'm gonna be showing you two that I make over this project and this class. But you're free to do whatever you want and create a piece that you feel like Represents your own creativity. This is a beginner level class and a pretty easy DIY project to do. You don't need a whole lot of supplies. And really with the directions that I'm going to give you today, you should be able to get going and make as many as you'd like. I really hope that you enjoy the project that you work on it and that you've finished during this class, at the end of the class, that would be great to see what you come up with. You can upload your picture on the class projects page so that we can see what you've made and create a gallery of all of our cool custom, modern art that we're gonna be doing throughout the project. So we're gonna go over the materials. We're gonna go over from start to finish how to make this project. And then once you're done, I would love to see, let's get started. 2. Materials: Let's start gathering all of the materials you're going to need for this project. So the first thing that you need to pick out is your Canvas. You can use a stretched canvas, you can use wood, you can use any sort of firm surface. You don't want something that's going to dip. So if you want to use paper, you're going to have to find something to make it firm at the back, whether that be a piece of wood underneath a canvas underneath what have you. But you'll want to, you're going to want something that's firm. If you do use paper, you also wanna make sure that when you're picking it up, you're very careful because your joint compound when it's dry, we'll crack if you bend it too much. So you want to be really careful about that. I'm gonna be using just a basic stretched canvas. This is a 12 by 16 size. You can buy them in all kinds of sizes, all kinds of shapes. You can get square or you can get rectangle, you can get long skinny ones. So pick the size that you feel is best by however many you want to make canvases your first thing, the second thing that you're going to need is your joint compound. So this is what I will be using. Basic joint compound. You can get it at any home improvement store. You can use any brand that you like, but you want to make sure that it's fresh. If it's all joint compound, it won't spread as nicely. And so you wanna make sure that it's nice and fresh to get a nice smooth surface. If you like a lot of texture and you don't mind that you can't smooth it out in the beginning and then it's okay to use an older one, but a fresh one will get you the best finished product. So joint compound is the next thing you're going to need. Your tools that you're going to be using. A putty knife, just your old basic one. You can use metal or plastic minus plastic. You want to make sure that you're cleaning off your tools in-between because you're gonna get a lot of joint compound on there. When it dries, it becomes a little bit chalky and it becomes a little bit harder to work with putty knife. You're going to want a palette knife. This will help you do some other types of texture and it will help just kinda smooth out some parts. Then this is a new tool probably for some of you. This is actually like a cake smoother slash decorator tool. But the thing that's unique about it is that it has these edges that are all different. So you have a smoother side. Then you have this more square, this more saturated saw looking one. And then this also is another kind of saw looking one. This will help you get different kinds of textures. This one is the hardest to work with, the square one because you get gobs of joint compound that buildup here and then they end up coming through. You don't get that with this one or with this one. But just if you're going to use a site like this, be careful with that. So this is a tool that you're going to need. They come in all sorts of sizes as well. You can get big ones, you can get small ones, you can get ones with different kinds of patterns. Not just the three that I have on mine, but you're going to want some sort of texture tool with different kinds of edges so that you can make the texture in your joint compound. Next, you're going to want your painting supplies so that will hold you over for making your piece. You might think about some protection that you want for your environment. Let's say you want plastic. I'm going to have a piece of wood behind my project while I'm working. Something to protect your carpet or the area that you're working in. But protection is always nice to make sure that you're not making a mess. This project is a little bit messy, so you're gonna be ready for that. If you have something down, you also will get stuff on your hands so you're free to wear gloves if that's what you need and you have sensitive skin. For painting, you're going to need some paint brushes. Whatever colors of paints you're going to use. I use acrylic paint on mine. You can use house paint because this is joint compound. You use it on your walls. You can use other types of paint. You can use chalk paint, you can use other types. But I'm just using my basic acrylics from my paint stash. And then if you have a paint palette, you might want to get that out in case you're wanting to make your own colors and you don't want to use preset colors that you bought. One of these is always handy to have out just in case that will be most of what you need for your project. So your Canvas, your joint compound and your tools, your protection pieces, and then you're painting equipment, and then you're ready to go. 3. Starting Your Canvas: We are ready to start with our canvas. So here is my opened joint compound. You can see that I haven't used it yet, which means it's fresh. The fresher it is, the easier it is to spread. So if you have old joint compound that you were using for a home improvement project or something? It might be a little bit hard. It won't be as fresh and as easy to spread. That's not that you can't use it, but just know that it's a little bit harder to work with. I'm gonna be using my putty knife and this is how we start our canvas. So we're going to be layering that joint compound on our entire surface. You don't want it to overlap the edges because that means that it would be really hard to frame or finished the Canvas later on down the line if you don't have clean edges. So we're going to try to avoid having a lot of overlap on the edges. But you're going to do a full layer over the whole canvas, just taking scoops and layering it on here. This is not a perfect science. You just need to get stuff on your canvas. And later on down the line, we're going to smooth it out. So just kind of work to get it all over the place. There are a couple of techniques that are helpful. If you go the full line. You'll get a pretty even amount across the whole canvas. But I tend to do that over and over and over until I have joint compound everywhere on my canvas. Let's say you put too much on there and you want to take some off, you can just gather it on your putty knife and then scoop it back into the joint compound is container. So not a big deal if you start off with too much, if you need to clean up the edges, you can also do that. But you're looking for maybe like a, like a penny's depths or a coins depth on the canvas across the entire thing. When you start to have it more or less everywhere on the canvas, you feel like you're doing a good job, spreading it over the entire thing. You can start to try to smooth it out. Now, the best pieces end up with a pretty smooth surface. So as you work, I'm taking off my extra personally, I always like to start with more that I need because it's easier to take it off when smoothing then adds them in different parts. But I'm going to start turning this back and forth. I have lines vertical right now. I'm going to do some horizontal ones and try to smooth this out a little bit. You'll notice that because this is pretty fresh joint compound, I'm doing a pretty good job keeping this pretty smooth. You don't need to have every single bubble solved or every single line. So let's say you want something with a lot of texture on your Canvas. You can leave some of these lines like this. And you can keep texture like that on your canvas if you want. That's not the look I'm going for, but it might be what you're hoping for. I'm just going to go back to smooth this out a little bit and getting my canvas to be a good start. Clean up those edges, especially before it dries. And you can have those smoothing lines run horizontal or vertical. Whichever way you feel like is going to be best. 4. Making Shapes: Let's start making some shapes because this is where things get fun. So I'm going to bring in my Texture tool. This is my icing decorator. And I'm going to use this triangular soft edge to start making some shapes. Let's start with a circle. With a circle, what you're going to want to do is place your tool down and rotate on one side of the tools. I'm going to hold this steady and rotate this kinda like a compass works if you've ever used one of those, I'm going to keep that one steady. And I'm pressing down into my Canvas, not with a lot of pressure, but with enough pressure so that I'm creating all of these lines. I'll continue that just keeping that middle right where I need it. Well, let's say you're not super happy with these. You can go back in with your palette knife and just try to even that out a little bit. It probably won't be totally perfect. But once you are fully dry, you can also sand down joint compound and you can go back in and try to even some of these out. So that's how we make a circle. We, now I'm going to take off that joint compound that I just got on my tool. And I can wipe that off on my paper towels. And I can actually, let's say you make a mistake. You're thinking, Oh my gosh, I don't like this. So you can actually go back in while this is wet and especially when it's fresh joint compound, you can go back in and you can erase. You can basically just restart and say No thank you to whatever you just made. Go back and remake your smooth outlines and go forward again. Alright, so next shape I wanted to do, let's say I wanted to do an arch. So this time I'm going to use this edge. I'm going to wipe this off a little bit so that it's nice and clean and basically just clean off inside of there so that you don't have little gobs that create a weird texture. Alright, so I'm going to use this side this time and we're gonna see what that looks like. And we're gonna do a really big arch. So I'm gonna go up in a straight line. Then I'm going to start with my arch, which means I'm going to use this as my rotator. And this side is going to work like that compass. I'm going to hold that middle as straight as possible as I go. Now I can come back down again in a straight line. There we go. Now I've got a full arch, which is kinda cool. Now this one you can see over here it got a little bit messy just because it was probably getting a little bit full-on there. So what I can do later is I can go back in and figure that out either with my palette knife and just smooth it. Or I can let it dry, and then I can use some sandpaper later. Now, if you plan to paint your piece afterwards, the paint actually will hide quite a bit, especially if you're using some cool colors and some cool pops of color. But if you want to leave it as is if you just like the white and the neutral tones, you can leave it like that as well. And then even out some of the joint compound with some sandpaper afterwards. Okay, so I'm gonna put this back on so that we can start over again. Now this is the most fun part about this whole project is that you can always go back and say, No, don't just love what I did. And you can start over. Or let's say you're super happy with it and you're thinking, okay, I'm good with this, and I want to move on and do a different kind of design. And then you can just get another canvas. Start all over again. I'm going to smooth this out one more time. As you can see, I always have my joint compound right next to me here so that I can clean off my putty knife. If you are feeling like there's little gobs getting everywhere and you would rather use some paper towel. You can always wipe them off on paper towel as well. That's the best part. One small tip for you as you keep reapplying, your ends might get a little bit messy. So I'm gonna go through and just clean up those borders again. Try to make them look a little bit smoother. Now joining compound will take hours and hours and hours to dry. But if you're working on this too long, you're going to notice that it gets a little bit thicker and a little bit harder to work with. So you do want to be a little bit quick in terms of what you're doing. You don't want to take forever to make the design that you're hoping to have. Let's do one more thing and then we'll start making some permanent designs in here. I'm going to use this other serrated edge, does more arc looking one so we can see what that one looks like. And we're just going to create some lines. I'm going to just create some lines here. Part of my tool is going to start off. Canvas. I'm going to try to hold it as flattened, steady as possible. As I approach the end. As you create lines, if you're creating multiple, you're gonna go in and take off the joint compound so that you're ready to make another one without adding more group to your piece. So there we go. There's one more take off that joint compound that I just had. And maybe I want to make a little circle over here. Here we go. Here's a little circle. So I've got quite a few shapes on here now. I've got quite a few designs. I've got some lines on here. I've got my circle. Now, some of these aren't super clean, especially at the ends here. So I'm gonna go in and see if I can clean this up. If I can. And it looks a little bit messy, I might just go back, restart. But if you have a clean enough tool and you don't have a lot of gunk on there. You should be able to go in there and clean it up a little bit. So I'm going to keep going. I'm probably going to change up this design. I'm not a big fan of the lines, so I'm going to do some arches throughout here. But I think maybe I will just end this part right here. The part that I didn't love. I'm going to do a big arch through there. Okay? So I'm gonna go in and I'm going to come this way. I think. I'm going to make an arch. Alright? So just a lot of different ideas for designs that you can do. You can do lines, you can do a mix, you can do all kinds of stuff and just really play around until you ask something I'm happy with. If you're not happy with it, go back and grab some of the joint compound that you took off and start over again. 5. Other Texture Techniques: I have another canvas that's prepped and ready to go. And we're gonna do some other kinds of textures on here, not using the Texture tool, we're actually just going to be using a palette knife. So one of the things you can do with a palette knife is create lines. You can just do a bunch of lines. You can do interlocking patterns. You might be able to do different kinds of symbols. I don't really know what I'm making here. I'm just going for it. But all sorts of things. You can do lines just with the tip. The other thing you can do is little indents. So you can do little bits that are like little swipes. And these might be able to create a cool texture. You'll want to clean off your palette knife as you go. But you might be able to do a lot of rows. Something like this. That could look a lot like petals of a flower. It could look a lot like just a texture. Let's say you like the look of that. And then you want to go back in, kinda clean up these lines that you have. You could go back in and even it out with something like your texture tool. So you can do all sorts of things where you're trying to manipulate this joint compound and create a design that you love. With the palette knife, you can also do some swirl motions, right? So you can do something like that. And we can even that back out. Really, it's up to you as to what your imagination comes up with in your design since you're able to work and manipulate for a little bit of time, you can really do anything that comes to mind. Maybe you really love a pattern like this, where you're alternating. You want to paint those different colors. It is really up to you. You can do whatever you like in here. 6. Drying The Piece: Here are the shapes that I ended up with. You can see that I've redone, done some swipes with the putty knife here and here and here. Then on here I've used that Texture tool to get a full design. The next step in the process to let this dry joint compound usually means about 24 hours to dry depending on how thick your layer is. You want to make sure that it's in a place that won't get stepped on by any pets that won't absorb anything from the air. Let's say you have a lot of dog hair that falls on things. You don't want it to fall on your piece. So someplace where you can probably close the door and let it sit. And then you also want some where that is level. You could keep something like my wood behind it or just put it on a table, but you want something that's pretty level that will help keep it steady. After about 24 hours, it should be pretty dry. You might notice some cracks in it. That happens when there's different kinds of temperatures that it's exposed to or maybe it's a little bit too thick of a layer. But you can usually cover that up with paint. So once you are ready to dry, you're going to set this somewhere where it won't be touched by anybody. And then we're going to get to painting and finish this piece off. 7. Painting your Canvas: Alright, so let's get to painting. I am ready. This is dry so I can touch it. You wanna make sure that if you have anything on your edges, you can break that off. Or you can even take some sandpaper and sand down some of these things if you want to get rid of it, you can see on down any of those kind of anomalies in your design. If you want to get it really smooth, you can even sand down the edges. If you're going to put a frame on it, you wanna do all of that before you get painting because if you sand it down, it's going to take off the paint as well. So here's my design. The first thing that you wanna do is pick your color palette. I've decided that I'm going to do silver and gold. So those are my two colors. I have these brushes and I'm going to be painting big blocks. I want brushes that aren't super, super large because I'm going to have to make sure that I'm creating some lines here. You also want brushes that are in good shape, that don't have things poking out of it like this because that can get everywhere else and it's hard to clean it off of the joint compound once the paint is on there. So whatever you're painting, you want it to actually go where you want it to go, instead of having it go somewhere else and try to wash it off because it doesn't come off super well. Okay, So we're gonna start with some silver. I think what I wanna do is I want to paint some areas right here and here with one color. And then I think I want to paint these areas with another. I'll be doing, um, some different colors, trying to make a full design. Alright, so here, here, here, and here, I think I'm going to do gold. And then here, and here I'm gonna do is silver. So I'm going to dip this in my paint. And I'm just gonna go for it. Different paints will have different opacities. And you can use different kinds of paint on joint compound. You can even use house paint if you want to match it with something in your house already. Acrylic paint works. You can use chalk paint, you can use tempera paint. Something like watercolors do not work as well. But there are quite a few different kinds of paints that you can use. So I'm trying to keep my lines steady within that line of the texture. And then I'm just going in and creating a solid coat throughout the cylinder. So after doing this part, I've decided I need a third color. So I'm going to use some copper. And I'm going to start accenting this with a little bit of copper and stick with that metallic theme. I think when I paint, I tend to have the color scheme first. Get that ready, and then I do one color at a time, adding small additions so that I don't overdo it to begin with. That helps me just take it slow and see what I like and make sure that I don't add anything. Ultimately, I don't want on there because I'm just going to do little pops of color on here and finish it off. 8. Finished Project: Alright, so here's a finished piece. My final product, this is one of the ones that I made. Here is the other one that I made. So I've got two pieces that are ready to go up on my wall. Once you are finished with all of the painting, there is one finishing touch you can put on it. If you'd like to paint the side of the canvas, it will create a frame. I might do it in this copper color just so it has a little pop of color on those sides there. But you could also build a frame out of wood to enclose the canvas. I'm gonna go put this up on my wall so we can see it in its final space. Here we are with our pizzas on a shelf, nicely put together so that you can see how those designs compliment one another and then its final space. I hope you really enjoyed your project. I hope you enjoy your end result. And please upload a picture of yours into the project space so that we can see what everybody comes up with, with different colors, different designs and different textures. Good job everybody. And I hope you enjoyed this class. Good luck making more.