Painting a Tote Bag!
- the art muse
- Feb 24, 2023
- 2 min read
Tote bags I feel are the most convenient yet fashionable accessory to add to your outfit on a daily basis. And who doesn't like a pop of colour to their plain white tote!
Every time I looked at my bag, I would suffer from the unquenchable thirst of painting it. I knew it would be a rather drastic decision and so I waited a year to let the perfect inspiration hit.
This Thursday, the 23rd of February, 2023, I finally got up, gathered my painting materials and got down to work. It was painting time! I scrolled through Pinterest over hours on end and finally decided to merge two pictures together. A cat and a few sunflowers. The contrast of the yellow sunflowers against the dark fur really helped the cat to pop out. Satisfied with my choice of subject, I started to paint.
I started off by making a 4 by 5 grid and sketching the basic outline over it. Then I moved on to paint the sunflowers, and boy oh boy was I pleased with myself. Painting has never been my strongest suite but what I had accomplished motivated me to continue with the process. I had never painted a prettier sunflower before. Happy with myself, I moved on to the background before painting the most difficult part, the cat.
Now we all know of the three primary colours, red, green and blue, and as per theory, the three combined should form black. It was this thought that made me use the three colours for the fur and the background instead of using black paint directly, because I had discovered that I could control the "blackness of black" better this way. And it worked just as fine.
The most challenging part of painting this piece was getting the cat's fur to look like fur. It gave me a very tough time and I will not say that I succeeded but it's the best that I could do. As I said, painting? Not my strongest suite.
Upcycling my tote bag was by far the most enjoyable experience I've ever had. I managed to film a few clips and compile them together to make a 40 second video, which I have embedded below. Let's get artsy!
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