Hand Painted Typography Trio (or, The Difference Between Artsy & Crafty.)

We need to take a minute and talk about something, before we start. Can we all agree that there is a distinct difference between artsy and crafty? The way I see it, the creative world is broken into two types of people. There’s the craft type, who do things like sew, and crochet, and maybe dabble in a bit of jewelry and making THINGS, and then there’s the artsy type- those who can draw and paint and make ART. I don’t think that either of these two is better than the other, and honestly think they can’t exist without each other.

I am, with out a doubt, the crafty type.

Which is why I am SO ridiculously, undeservingly proud of these.

After a friend of mine texted me some typography art from Target (see the FOURTEEN DOLLAR inspiration, if you’d like), I knew I had to recreate for myself, in my own style and for about 8 bucks. I am not a painter. I’d never even painted on a canvas before this project. But hey, they were on sale at Michael’s for half off, so I got 4 of them for $5.99. All I had to add to that was paint and brushes which I do already own; crafty people paint, too. It’s just… different.

My paint, for example, has previously been used on Christmas balls and some fabric.

So here’s the first difference between how artsy people and crafty people paint. I spent a good chunk of time with a ruler and a pencil drawing perfect stripes and chevrons. No freehanding here- precise lines in light pencil. I’d LOVE to be able to say I drew any of this freestyle, but I’d be lying.

I have the chevrons in the middle, and then two diagonal canvases, running in opposite directions for each side. Once the lines were finally perfect, I mixed up the perfect shades and painted them. As it turns out, painting along a straight line is HARD. I think they look okay though. As I like to say, just call it rustic.

After letting them dry, I turned my attention to the typography part. Again, I wasn’t going to attempt this. So, I printed out my quotation marks, my interrobang, and my ampersand. Then, I cut them out, and- you guessed it- traced them. Again- crafty. I can’t can’t can’t draw.

I gotta say though: I’m proud of these. I can’t say I’ll be doing too much more painting on canvases, but I’ll definitely be doing some more typography art. I think next time I break out the paint brushes, they may be for some typography stencils on bags. I’ll leave the canvases to the experts*. (*see below.)

So that’s the whole set. I like how they look both together and individually. Now I just need to figure out where to hang them!

Ideally, these will hang in a craft room, but I’ll settle for a nice bathroom, or whatever.

I wanna know- are you artsy or crafty? Let me know in the comments!

*This is what Artsy does while Crafty is tracing lines:

Yep. That’s an Eevee (currently being finished). Hand painted. On a lovely blue and green variegated background. Did I mention it was all done with just one reference picture and not-quite-the-right shades of paint? Mhmm. That’s the difference between Artsy and Crafty.