Makeover A Painting To Fit Your Style

Makeover A Painting To Fit Your Style.  We all know that finding art for any room or space is subjective.  It can be a landscape, abstract, floral, portrait or any kind of art.

Finding a painting that not only has the right subject but color and size for your particular space can be a real challenge.  Then we always have to consider our budget.  Mine is usually on the really small side, so that can make it even more difficult.

When we moved into this house, I loved the two-story living room, however, one wall was two full stories tall and that meant it looked really blank.  I needed large art to help fill this space.  The first challenge was just finding a really large painting, then the second challenge was the price.

I looked everywhere.  There were some really large paintings at AT HOME that were reasonably priced, but the subject matter seemed all wrong.  If you have followed me for a while you saw that I had borrowed my dining room buffet table to add as an entrance table on this big wall.  My daughter loaned me a painting she had and it looked great here.  I like the abstract art and felt it didn’t conflict with anything else in the room.  She used this art piece in her stairs so I needed to find something and give it back to her.  I really loved the size 36″ wide by 48″ tall.

A lot of abstract art is done in bold colors and that wouldn’t work.  Now to find something is neutral colors.  I also couldn’t find anything that would be 36 inches wide and at least 48 inches tall.  It seemed like everything was 48 inches wide and 36 inches tall.  Just the opposite of what I wanted.

Then I saw this piece that is actually a painting of water that I could see turned to be the height I needed, but it had quite a bit of blue in it. (Can you turn your head and see the water scene in this piece?)  Blue wasn’t going to work and it also made it look like a water painting turned around sideways.  The biggest asset was background colors in neutral beiges, some gold gild and a great price.  This piece was on sale for $69.00 at HOME GOODS.

I thought I could paint over those bright blue spots on the painting, and tone down some of the blue backgrounds to gray with a little bit of touch-up paint.

 

Art is really hard for me, but I like this one.  I love that it is framed and I like the colors except for the blue.  This piece of art is mostly brown, camel, cream, gold, and black.   Hubby liked this one too, so I think with a little bit of DIY I can change it up to fit what I need.

I have a whole collection of different craft paints, so I put some of a bunch of browns, gray, black, and camel on a paper plate and just started dabbing and streaking with a couple of small brushes.  I was careful to cover the blue with a mix of colors that coordinated with the rest of the painting.  As I covered the blue I also streaked in more white and camel to tone down so much dark brown.

 

You can see in this area on the bottom where there was a large blue spot, a little bit of brown, creams and camel covered enough to give this corner some character.

The really bright blue spot on the top of the painting got a touch up too.

Now the painting doesn’t look like it is turned sideways, it just looks like an abstract piece of art.  Perfect for my room.

 

If you don’t like what you find, paint over it to create something that works for you.  It’s just a little paint, you really can’t mess up too much if you are just careful and add layers lightly.  Now I can’t imagine any other painting in this space.

So what do you think?  For an inexpensive painting that is 36″ x 48″ and framed, I think it turned out really well.  Comparable sizes that I found usually ran at least $150 and up.  My advice, if you find something that almost works, just add a little DIY and make it exactly what you want.

Check out my tips to make any budget art print look like an oil painting.

How To Make A Print Look Like An Oil Painting.