The shaving cream painting that didn't work, but then did!

I recently went through a replace-all-the-store-bought-wall-art-in-my-home-with-my-own-artwork phase. It was a lot of fun trying to come up with a variety of pieces that kind of flowed, but weren’t repetitive. 

Ok, maybe they don’t all flow. But they’re in different rooms, so it's ok. 

Above my TV was a 2’x3’ Ikea print of some sort of flowers in a black frame. It worked for some inexpensive art when I bought it five years ago, but it has served its time.  Here's what it looked like:

Now this is above my TV: 

Another flower! But this one was made by me! Here’s how... 

First off, I should say this piece turned out nothing like I intended. It was going to be just a colourful design with no flower, but that didn’t work out. I tried to use a marbling technique I’ve used in the past on paper that looks a little something like this: 

Those are some Easter eggs I made with the kids at school. Way different than my hibiscus painting, right? It was done with the same technique! 

The technique: 

Put shaving cream on a disposable surface and spread it out until it’s relatively flat and even.  For the paper I used some wax paper on a table. My canvas was 2'x3', so I used a shower curtain from my local dollar store on my kitchen floor.

Plop some colour onto the shaving cream in random spots and use a toothpick to swirl it around (for the paper I used food colouring, for the canvas I used acrylic paints). 

Lay your paper/canvas face-down on top of the colourful shaving cream mess and smooth it out so there are no air bubbles. 

Pull the paper/canvas off the shaving cream, discard the shaving cream left on the disposable surface, and lay your paper/canvas shaving-cream-side up on a flat surface. 

Use something flat, sturdy, and either washable or disposable (I used a plastic cutting board) to squeegee the shaving cream off your paper/canvas. 

That’s the end of the process for the paper Easter eggs, but the canvas was not looking right. My theory as to why it didn’t work is because the canvas is on a wooden frame and, therefore, not flush to the hard surface it was laid upon. Because of this, the canvas flexed as I was squeegeeing and made it impossible to effectively remove all of the shaving cream. 

Once I saw the canvas was a hot mess, I began to improvise. 

I grabbed a wad of paper towels and started removing the shaving cream that way. I thought “maybe I can use this paper towel as a squeegee and my hand will conform to the stretch of the canvas.” It worked, in a sense... I got the shaving cream off, but the paint smeared something fierce. It was starting to look alright though, so I used the paper towel to sweep across the full length of the canvas, making the paint smear look remotely intentional. 

Once it dried, I spent a few days looking at it with ambivalence. At some point it started growing on me, and eventually I ended up really liking how it looked. But because the colours were mixed and there was no definitive design, it looked bare. That’s when the large hibiscus flower came into play. 

The hibiscus was an image I found on Google, blew up quite a bit, and transferred onto the canvas. 

To transfer images, I print the image on paper, coat the back of the paper with chalk (or a heavy-leaded pencil for light-coloured canvases), tape the image in place, and trace the image with a blunt item, like a ball point pen. Remove the paper and trace the chalk line on the canvas with your medium of choice... black Sharpie in this case. 

And to finish it off, fill in the blank spots.

So, this is an example of serendipity! It wasn’t at all what I was going for, but I think this piece looks better than what I originally had in mind. 

Do you have a story of some failed artwork that turned out to be a winner? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!