Overview
I was first exposed to creating paintings with spray paint on youtube. After watching a few tutorials, I decided to try it for myself and I was quite happy with the results. This is a painting project that is quite simple and produces painting that look fairly impressive. It may take a few experiment paintings until you get the desired outcome; you do have to work quite fast while the paint is wet.
What You’ll Need:
- Spray paint of your chosen colours
- Round plates or lids that you don’t mind getting covered in paint
- A painting surface (I used Bristol board)
- A pallet knife
- Old magazines (must have a glossy finish)
- A piece of wood or cardboard to tape the painting surface to
- Rubber gloves if you don’t want to get your hands covered in paint
How To Do It Yourself:
Preparation:
- Find a bunch of circular objects like lids from plastic containers, or old plates. These items will get covered in paint so don’t use your mom’s best china.
- If you cannot easily pick the plates up, super glue something (like a stone) to the bottom of it for you to grab onto.
- Cut a piece of Bristol board to your desired dimensions and tape it to a piece of wood or cardboard to give you a firm surface to paint on. (I put the tape on the back)
Before you begin painting, you have to think abut what you want to do because you need to paint it fairly quick; the paint can’t dry.
Main Concept:
These paintings are done in layer, covering up spaces that you want to preserve and removing layers to expose the colours beneath
Creating a Planet:
To create a planet you will need to choose a colour scheme of 2 or more colours. Spray these colours on your canvas in the general area that you want the planet to be located. Then, working while the paint is wet, take a glossy magazine page and dab the canvas to wipe off layers of paint.
This is the place where you can get creative, try smudging, blending, dabbing, or wiping the paint in different directions to get the desired texture. Once you are happy with the texture, use one of your circular covers and place it on your painting where you want your planet to be. Make sure you place it so just the rim is touching the paper (if you are using a plate, place it upside down on the canvas). You are now ready to create the surrounding landscape and background of your painting.
Creating the Surrounding Landscape:
There are various methods of creating the landscapes surrounding your planets.
One option is to leave the planet in open space. To do this, while the cover is still over the planet, spray the entire canvas black. You can also use white to speckle stars onto the painting. I think this actually looks fairly realistic if you paint your planet white, grey, and black to create a moon and just spray the background black. I have done just a simple moon and a black background and I think it turned out really well; it would make a good post card. For that one I just used a 4×6 glossy photo paper as a canvas.
Another option you have for a surrounding a simple cave-wall or mountain texture. To achieve this texture, while the planet is covered, spray a few lighter colours around the canvas and end with a coat of black. Use a pallet knife to remove the black paint in various locations revealing the layers of colour below. Below is a painting I did with a single planet and a cave-wall texture around it.
The possibilities are endless with what you can do, below is a painting I did that has multiple planets, mountain textures, a city and a bridge. To make the cityscape, I used a similar method to the mountain texture I described above. You spray on multiple light colours then end with black. I then used a pallet knife to remove the black paint in the shape of a building or bridge.
Closing Comments:
I really enjoy doing these paintings because each one is unique and you never quite know how it is going to turn out until you are finished.
Like always, if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below; and if you decide to try this project yourself, I would love to hear how it turned out!
The Becker Notion 