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Geometric Art by an Engineer {Tutorial}

When we moved into our new house (umm, almost two years ago), we had a huge space on the wall behind our couch that was just desperate for some artwork. But well, art can be expensive and it’s hard to find something I like. I’m a big fan of geometric prints (it’s the engineer in me!), so I thought I’d try creating my own artwork:

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I’m not getting into the debate of whether this is art or design. It’s just something that I like having on my walls, and leave it at that.

We bought a big L-shaped lounge suite in burgundy to fill the room. I’m such an engineer, that I actually googled “colour schemes with burgundy” to work out my colour palette. And funnily enough, I came up with a colour palette with some of my favourite colours: greens, pale pink and gold.

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A trip to my local art supplies store for two canvases, paint and masking tape, and I was ready to create!

I told you this was art by an engineer – nothing was left to chance. I started by drawing random lines in pencil across the canvas, creating different-sized triangles.

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Then I wrote what colour each triangle was going to be, making sure no triangles next to each other were the same colour and trying to get an interesting distribution of colour across the canvas.

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Next, I didn’t want to use white for the lines between the canvas, but a creamy colour (better suiting the room and colour palette), so I painted over all the lines in the cream, not worrying too much about how far I painted into the triangle areas, but making sure it was at least as thick as my masking tape. I ended up doing two coats of paint at this step, since I could still see the pencil after one coat. I also painted the sides of my canvas with the cream.

After the paint dried, I placed masking tape across the lines I’d drawn previously, making sure the tape overlapped and had nice sharp corners at the points of the triangles.

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Then I painted each triangle in the colour I’d noted. After the paint dried, I carefully peeled off the masking tape, and there I had my art by an engineer.

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After adding some hanging wire to the back of the canvas, I hung them on the wall.

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If you’re wondering why I hung them on an angle, well, there were two existing hooks on the wall, but they didn’t line up (and I only found out after I’d put the hanging wire on). So I put the art on an angle so you wouldn’t notice (and to pretend that it’s just that little bit more artistic!).

Geometric Art by an Engineer

Have you made any “artwork” for your home?

3 Comments

  1. I think your art work is lovely. Such a clever idea. I have some canvases left over from art class I went to 4 years ago. time to get out the brushes and get designing.
    Thank you . Deirdre

  2. I think your art work is very clever. Such beauty put on to a canvass. I always thought pastel colors were fun to work with. I’ve always wanted to try something similar to this lovely art work.
    Thank you, Miranda

    1. Thanks for your lovely comments! I’d love to see what you make with my tutorial.

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