A few moths ago, I saw this fun bike print canvas at World Market…

It hit a lot of the notes for me: graphic but weathered, whimsical, wonderful…

…Except the random bird flying in stage left. Just weird. He did nothing for me.

But I snapped a couple of pics, so I could refer to them for a version of my own one day.

And then that day came!

I pulled out the hotel art turned nativity backdrop, and went at it.

There is just something so therapeutic to me about sloshing a bit of paint on a canvas!

I started light, then went too bright and the “scratches” I added to the foreground just weren’t working for me…

So I muted down the background and foreground, and I liked that better…

But after standing there staring at it cock-headed for a bit, I decided to give it another coat of super watery paint.

It was practically pooling off the canvas.

Then I sprinkled salt all over the lower/brown area. I knew the salt would soak up the watery paint, and when it all dried, I’d have some great visual texture. [I left it to dry overnight and then rubbed off all the salt the next day outside.]

It had a great weathered, mottled look… But, alas, as any nap-crafty mama knows, sometimes projects get shelved when the munchkins awake…

So this painting got put aside for almost a month…

Then I sort of loosely added a bike…

I didn’t bother to do all the shading and effects to the bike, but just left it blacked in… [I think partially because I knew this painting is destined for a repaint too!]

Sometimes I wonder why I paint only to paint over. Go fig!