channeling my inner artist

When people move out of my apartment building often times all those "cleaning house" items get left in the front hall, free for the taking.  Sometimes its really annoying, but other times I've found some fun scores.  A few weeks ago a generic painted canvas was left.  I passed by it once thinking it was pretty ugly.  But when I passed by it again a light bulb went off and I decided to grab it.

Normally I think of myself as a pretty creative person.  I grabbed that canvas thinking I could make my own DIY art, I mean it can't be that hard, right?  I've seen other people do their own versions of art, and I could always channel my inner Jackson Pollack and splatter some paint all over it. 

Just for giggles I'll show you my painting process.  This is what I started with

I started my DIY project by covering the whole canvas with Zinsser primer.  Because I had no clue what I was capable of I wanted to keep this project within my $0 budget, so I used everything that I had at home already.

I forgot to take a photo of the plain white canvas I started with so just imagine it looked something like this

At this point it's where things got a little fuzzy.  I must have painted close to 50 different layers on this canvas.  I kept it propped up on my family room for about a week and every night I would come home from work and paint something different.

I guess you could think of it as pretty cheap therapy.  On days where I was tired or cranky my art was pretty dark with a lot of navy blues and on days where it was sunny and I was happy there were lots of whites and pastels.

I was so into painting I totally forgot to take photos of all the different versions I came up with, but here are a few

After the above version I must have had 20 more, but was lost in what I was doing and totally spaced on photos.

Here is what I ended up settling with

In hindsight I probably should have stopped a few versions back, because I did like some of the other paintings I had done.  But that's what happens when you don't step away from the paintbrush.

In the end I'm pretty sure I should leave the art to the pros and put my painting skills to use on some craigslist furniture.  But for now, I have this to look at...

...till I decide to paint over it again.