Mini Graffiti Hearts Painting To Spread The Love

Now is a great time to spread the love by painting tiny hearts galore! And while it is true that folks are thinking about hearts as February approaches, hearts are great anytime, and who couldn’t use a little extra love right about now? A mini hearts painting that could also become a mix of hearts to look more like a graffiti hearts painting is a great project to do over the course of a few days, and perfect for beginners. And, if you feel like painting something to give as a gift, this idea done on small canvases would also look great. I’ll admit, it is more difficult that it looks, but the great thing about acrylic paint is that if you’re not happy with the outcome, use that as the under layer for another painting! Start your painting by writing your heart’s desire on the first layer, or fill it with wishes or prayers for a loved one, and paint away. With each heart send some love to the person for whom you are painting this, and your painting will truly be more than just a pattern, it will be a work of art literally filled with love! Okay, you will need to practive painting little hearts, but once the muscle memory in your hand kicks in, it is just a matter of diligence! Let’s get started!

You’ll Need:

a canvas or watercolor paper
gesso and acrylic paint
a small brush, try out a few

How To:

Gesso your canvas with 2 coats of gesso if you want this painting to endure over time. You can tint your gesso with color to make that the first layer if you like.
Choose a background color that in the end may or may not be seen, but will be seen on the sides of the canvas. As you can see below, my background color was a vivid red/orange, which works nicely if you are going with blues only. I couldn’t resist trying more color on top of the blues, but it is risky, just be forewarned, as my adventure with hearts turned out to be with many color mistakes and painting over colors that didn’t work. SO you may want to choose about 6 to 8 colors that work together before getting started, I can imagine that would save lots of time.
Practice painting hearts on a piece of paper to get the swing of it and come up with a heart and heart size that you like, I painted the hearts with basically two strokes: one from right hand corner down to middle, and one from left hand corner down to middle, that is it! Sometimes you do need to touch up the point, but don’t worry about that in the first layers as it will in any case get covered.
Okay, now get started, possibly starting with the cool colors and then moving on to warm colors, but there is no right way.
If you painting is a winner be sure to sign it and varnish it so it lasts a hundred years for starters!

Here is the hearts painting on my kitchen gallery shelves, and it does look great with a llama portrait, right?
And the original painting that got me addicted to hearts, at least I have a photo of it! Happy painting, there is nothing quite like getting out the paint and enjoying applying color to paper or canvas, and that joy is really the point of it all, so don’t worry about the outcome!