The dining room is my favorite part in this townhouse right now. The awning window brings in so much light, and although it's a rather busy street out there, thanks to the thick cherry blossom trees, we are separated from the hustle and bustle just enough.
Before we got this townhouse, I walked by here quite often, and was amazed by the luscious cherry blossoms this past spring. Little did I know, a few months later I would be living in one of these structures generously surrounded by the beautiful trees. Once again I am so grateful to be able to live here, and really appreciate all the wonders nature brings to us.
I wanted to add an artwork to our dining room wall, and hence spent quite some time browsing for inspirations. Basically I know that I want something geometric, bold and abstract, but didn't have a concrete plan. Then I came across this image one day, and knew right away this was what I would paint! Simple yet powerful, the image leaves room for imagination. Perfect!
Transferring the image from the screen onto the canvas wasn't rocket science, although in order to get the right size and proportion, I did have to redo it.
After I had the composition laid out, the rest of the project was almost pure mechanical. Simply use painter's tape to block the same colored areas, color with acrylic paint, let dry and move on to the next. However as the image had some rather sharp corners, trimming the tape to fit these fine edges required the most work. Also, the reds had a far less coverage than the blues, so I had to work the red areas several times to achieve the desired coverage. The blues were so simple! One coat of paint and voila! So neat and saturated. Wonder if this difference is an acrylic paint thing or a cheap paint thing? :P
The left image shows an almost-done painting. The paint did bleed through the painter's tape a little, so I had to do a little touch up of white paint along the outer edges of the colored part.
The finished painting does produce a feeling of dimension and depth, I'm quite happy with the result. Big thanks to the master minds in cyber space that are willing to shaire their genius!
After the painting was hung on the wall, I found that it did match the dining room rather well. When I picked the dining room furniture, I was very conservative and stayed with subtle colors, as I was afraid that anything too bold or colorful may go out of style our I may get tired of it soon. However, I wanted to be a bit more risky with the accessories, since they are smaller and of course less pricy.
Our all-IKEA dining room started out all calm and neutral, and now with the bursts of colors suddenly there's a lot more life to the space. And since the painting has the red&blue tone, I extended it with a brighter twist by adding the magenta seat cushions and turqoise place mats.
The dining room faces south, so whenever it's sunny there's direct sun light in the room. Having these warm rays right in the house is one of the biggest factors that drew me into this place. The hues of the room is quite dramatically different with or without sunlight. Although here on the West Coast we can't ask for too much sun besides the summer, it's just wonderful to be able to expect the brightness in the room whenever it is sunny. The natural light brings me so much joy.
The day before I took the photos, I stopped by my previous rented residence and said hi to the nice Germany old lady who lived next door. She was so kind to us all last year, and that day she asked me to pick the apples from the tree in the front yard. She said that a black bear was getting into them and both her and the new tenants in my previous home spotted the bear. Although sighting a bear sounded pretty cool, I thought staying safe may just be cooler. I was very content with our little harvest.
As the last bit of autumn sunlight hit the colorful dining table, I feel ready to add more colors into our home.
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