There is a certain angle of sunlight that streams in the southern windows during NFL Football season. The windows are on either side of the 65-inch TV, and the glare from the bare upper part of the window makes it dreadful to watch anything, let alone a tiny image of a football doinking off a goal post to ruin a kicker's life.
Some years ago, I made canvas panels from a dropcloth, thinking the custom window covers would reduce if not eliminate the glare. I don't remember what year it was -- I think it was pre-Covid, but it was the same year that someone had smeared some blue food coloring on one of my white dish towels in the kitchen -- that would have been somewhere around Easter -- and the blue stain was still there for autumn.
Long-lasting stain + natural canvas panel = Idea/Experiment/Creative Itch
I wet the canvas panels with a spray bottle, then painted a little scene of autumn leaves in colors of food coloring: red, yellow, green, and blue. It was cute, and did cut the glare.
Lo, these several years later, the greens and yellows had faded from the harsh California sun, but the blue and the red were still there. (Think about that the next time you eat red velvet cake.) And in these same several years, I've grown more bold with painting with color.
Taking the old canvas panels outside, I wet them down with the spray bottle again, and then attacked with lots of food coloring, no more little cute dabs -- and then set them upright against a sawhorse for about two minutes. The colors ran together in a riot! I laid them flat again and let them dry. This is the result:
and
I asked Bernie if he wanted me to use a Sharpie and do something more representational with the design, but he liked it better as a more abstract image. I think I do, too.
More fun than making curtains.
