Arrow Art

It’s hard for me to believe that it’s already August… and not only is it already August, but we’re almost half way through! That’s crazy. Just yesterday, it felt like we were celebrating the 4th of July. So before summer leaves us for good, I figured I’d show you a little season-inspired artwork that has made its way into our gallery of frames in the family room.

Excuse the interesting spacing and unbalanced layout… I’m in the middle of tweaking things and moving things around, but I just couldn’t wait to show you this project. Something about arrows looks like summer to me. Maybe they remind me of summer camp? Finding things on hikes in the woods? Whatever the reason, I decided that our gallery wall needed some color and some summer, so here’s what I came up with… see it down there?

This was a really fun project and I did it while watching TV on a lazy day (Harry Potter bonus features, to be exact… if you were wondering). Although parts of it look intricate and maybe a little intimidating for someone who would want to try on their own, but aren’t over the moon about their painting skills, the process was really quite easy. And I gave myself a lot of grace- it doesn’t have to be perfect! Here’s how I did it…

I started with a blank canvas, some regular acrylic paints, and a whole slew of different sized brushes (I found that I used the smallest ones the most). Oh, and a couple of metallic Sharpies- one in gold and another in silver.

First step is making the body of the arrows… for the size of my canvas (8×10), I decided on four and spaced them as evenly as I could. After making the initial line, I went back and filled them in with some texture.

Next came adding the arrow heads. Just the basic shape and colors of what I wanted… the super intricate details will come later.

For the heads and the tails (is that the right term?), I Googled different images until I found a few examples that I liked and used those as inspiration. One at a time…  making sure I had a variety of colors, styles, and patterns.

After that came some of those details… feathers, leaves, string. Adding dots or dashes.

And after that, even more details… finer dots and lines, more pronounced texture on the feathers and leaves, etc. I thought of the process in terms of adding layers. I’d go over each arrow with some details, then step back, and go over everything again with another layer and so forth and so on until I felt like it was finished.

The final step was adding some extra movement and sparkle with a few metallic Sharpies. Gold dots, silver dashes, gold accents on the feathers, silver on the leaves… just a few touches here and there to make things come alive a little bit more. It made more of a difference than I thought it would and actually turned out to be the cherry on top to bring it all together. Here’s what the final product looks like:

Then I just hung it up! I was so excited to get it on the wall, I’m not sure if it was even fully dry yet. 🙂

So tell me… any season specific decor finding its way onto your walls? I’m thinking (er, hoping) that this one will just transition gracefully into the early fall months so we can enjoy it that much longer. 🙂 Happy Summer, everyone!