Dorm Room Feng Shui Part II

Last Thursday I wrote about my beginning of a project to create better feng shui in my dorm room. Over the course of the weekend I spent a good amount of time working on my celtic knotwork poster, and am proud to say that I have finished it and mounted it on my wall. I am fairly pleased with how it turned out, and now feel like my room is ever so slightly more lived in.

When I last left off I had finished the color and outline for the center knot. Upon picking up the work again, I first mixed myself a shade of silvery gray that I was content with, and filled in the the crescents:

Silvery Gray painted in the crescents.

Once I had that done, I left it alone for a couple days. I toyed with the idea of filling in the negative space for a while, as I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to spend a great deal of time filling in the small spaces with a tiny brush. Finally, I decided I’d just have to bite the bullet and pain them in, if only to remove as much white space from the room as possible. So I mixed myself a jar of a deep blue and set to work:

Filling in the fiddly bits.

After a good two hours or so of working on filling in all the minuscule spaces (and believe me, there are a lot of them!) with an exceptionally tiny brush to be sure my lines were as clean as possible, I grabbed a larger brush and set to work on the brackground:

Initial fill in of the background.

Now, at this point I was nearly sure I was done. I was all set to wait for it to dry so I could hang it on the wall. But the more I looked at it the more I realized there was something important missing…

Added stars to the background.

Stars! Of course! I’d created this lovely night sky and left it completely blank. Silly me. So I cleaned that impossibly small brush and used it to create little pinpoints of light all over the background. This being done I felt it was less like looking at a picture and a bit more like looking out a window. Granted, I’ve never seen the moon look quite like this, but I feel I’m allowed some artistic license.

Finally, I realized that the one thing that was still missing was an outline on the crescents to tie them in to the rest of the knotwork. Yes, I thought they looked fine on their own, but I also knew that there was a silver sharpie in the possession of a friend that I could borrow, and so I once again set to work:

Outlined the crescents.

There! Finally finished! Once it was dry I went to put it up, only to realize that all of the water I used had bowed the cardboard outward, making it impossible to mount successfully. Never fear though, as I quickly whipped out every heavy book in the room (and yes, as an art history major, I’ve quite a few) and within a day or so I had a lovely flat piece of work ready to be put up for my viewing pleasure:

A much calmer space.

So there you have it! My finished tribute to the concept of dorm room feng shui. Perhaps one day I’ll come up with a real name for it, but for the moment I’m content just to have filled part of my wall space with a little less white, and a lot more color.

And don’t mind Jack’s expression. I’m sure he loves it just as much as Yoda does.

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Dorm Room Feng Shui

A few nights ago I found myself staring at the walls of my new room, which are unfortunately painted a clinical white. Looking around my small living space I realized that the walls feel far too barren to make the place truly habitable, and decided I would have to get some art to put up on them. Sadly, all of my posters and various portable art works are miles away, and I, having renewed my poor college student status after a prolonged haitus, have virtually no funds to use for decorations.

So of course I grabbed a piece of leftover cardboard salvaged from a previous resident, and began to contemplate ways in which to create a slightly less barren looking landscape on my walls. After a short conversation with a friend of mine about the concept of dorm room feng shui, I decided that whatever I did would need to inspire peace, happiness, and creativity. And so, after a bit of browsing around the web, I came up with a celtic knotwork patten that recreates the triple moon goddess symbol I’m most fond of.

I started by printing out the design patterns I wanted to recreate, and used a ruler to measure out three even sections of my piece of cardboard. I then used pencil to redraw the images I’d chosen onto the cardboard, only much larger than their computer printed versions:

Pencil Outlines

Once I was satisfied with the outline, I grabbed a set of tempra paints and several brushes, and set to work filling it in:

The outline with the center portion colored in.

After I’d gotten my colors on the center knotwork, I used a set of sharpies and various markers to outline the piece, so that the final result would look cleaner and more defined:

Center knotwork colored and outlined.

It was at that point that I realized I didn’t have the color I wanted for the crescents, and would have to mix up something. Unfortuantely, I also ran out of time to finish and had to leave it sit for a while. I have been continually working on it when I can this week, and plan to finish it this weekend when I’ve a bit more free time.

I’m also considering painting in the background a deep blue or black, so that there isn’t any white negative space left. Because goddess knows I’ve got plenty of that here already. So until then, I leave you with one final closeup of what I’ve done so far:

Closeup of the center knot.

Come back this weekend to see the finished result! Same bat time, same bat channel…

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