{the pinterest challenge: fine art edition}

So, having finished the background yesterday, I started the painting of the dandelions. Did I wait twenty-four hours? Most definitely not. A scant five hours after painting the background, I found the paint brush back in my hand.

I unstuck the paper towel templates as I painted each dandelion head, but kept them nearby as a guide. With the dandelion seeds, I was going for not too hearty, nor too blobby. I know, all very technical.

In case you're wondering about paints, for the flowers I used Burnt Umber brown acrylic and black fabric paint (I'd run out of black acrylic). I'm not sure that's ideal -- they seemed a little shy at first, and took a good deal of stirring to get comfortable enough to mix with each other.

And, of course, there's the obligatory red. Seeing as the painting's beauty came from its complete lack of colour, the red had to be very subtle. Just five small dots, next to the far right stem. Just enough to make sure my granddad, who always says that every work of art needs a dot of red, is happy.



And before we have the final reveal, I just thought I'd remind you of the inspiration (a painting spotted on Pinterest):

Here is our version (I don't know when Mr Dala Horse crept in there... perhaps, subconsciously, I'm putting a spot of red in all my photos now, too):

What do you think? Passable as something to hang on the wall? Justin's kind reaction was "It could be a tracing!" (a la Michael Scott at Pam's art show) I had to laugh at myself as I was trying to copy the little imperfections from the original -- notice the seeds slightly out of place above the second and fourth dandelions?

It turns out there's a whole movement now of people recreating things they've pinned. To see some of the amazing creations, pop over to YHL's Pinterest Challenge.