On the days I am open (Wednesday to Saturday) you’ll often see me painting or creating art in the Studio 3 found in Berry’s Arcade at the top of Rayleigh high street.
I am always more than happy to answer questions on how I create the art and offer advice to any budding artist or discuss techniques with the creative minds who often artists drop into see me.
Several of you have been asking how to use art to compliment a room: where to start using colour in your home?
My initial advice is to try and treat each room separately until you build confidence. If the space you intend to decorate with art is used for a specific reason, keep this in mind too.
I don’t have a one size fits all answer but if you use a simple formula like the one I’ve added below, it might just help! You are always welcome to pop in and talk through your thoughts as well.
So, what to do first…
- What is the room going to used for? If its your main living space and the walls allow, a big piece of art will help reduce the idea of too much clutter when often other pieces of furniture are the biggest parts of the room. Bedroom spaces also works well with less on the walls but again, this is personal choice.
- Walk into the space, scan the room and see what your eye focuses on… don’t cheat!
- It can be a piece of furniture (cushion or throw), a colourful bowl or even foliage.
- Your eye is drawn to that colour because you either love it or its stands out in that room.
- If its more than one colour or item, that’s fine. Use these items to decide your initial colour palette that should help when looking for in the art you go for.
- It doesn’t need to be a very prominent colour; a subtle shade can be the perfect start to give you a steer in tones that might work. Darker or softer tones in all shades can be found in the art rather than the room itself.
- If your walls have very little colour, you can afford to use bolder colours to exaggerate a space. If the items were muted in tone, then you can pick colours to warm a room and create a focal point.
- If you walls have lots of colour already, then you’re not afraid of using colour to enhance a space. Using art pieces, set into larger frames or with a light colour border to off-set the colours on the walls.
The next step is agreeing the size of art to hang. Large pieces hung on their own in a space, should do one of two things: Be big enough to not ‘disappear’ on the wall and should compliment the space.
If going big is a little out of your comfort zone, you can use lots of smaller pieces. A good rule of thumb (but its all personal choice..) is to:
a) Ensure the frames are the same but the art is different and matches the tones from the focal colours in the room. You can hang the frames both horizontal and vertical to mix it up and works really well.
b) Have fun with the frames making them all different size and shapes but the art is similar or even black and white. If this doesn’t make sense, ask me what I mean, and I’ll try and explain by using the art in the Studio.
Alongside personal pictures of family and memorable moments, art can really help to tie rooms design together. If this isn’t something you are comfortable with, take a picture of your space and make a note of the colours you have or those items your eyes were drawn to and pop into see me. You can use my pots of paint to help steer the colours you have and I can give you some idea of what might work and which tones to consider. It may be that I have the perfect piece of original, affordable art that will work for you either one of my own or one of the many artists displaying.
Take a look at the Originals page and if you see something you like that’s a good place to start! Even if the painting is marked as sold I may have a print in the Studio that you might like or recreate the style in the colours and size that would work for your home. An original, not reproduced and found in multiple shops, something just for you and your home.
I look forward to seeing you soon.
Best wishes
Caroline x
