In my house there was this old canvas that was covered in spray paint, but not like " Oh wow look at this cool street art" way, it was just blotches of dark paint. So, some time ago I decided to try to paint the canvas white, that way I could reuse it. I could have also peeled the paint but it was a thick layer and I was afraid it would just make the base uneven, so covering it was the best option.

At that momment I had just discovered this amazing superhero posters by Justin Van Genderen (Behance), and they seemed like the perfect thing to recreate (or try to) in the old canvas. The collection is called 'Comic Locations' and it's AWESOME. Ever since I was a teen I've loved Batman comics so I just HAD TO recreate the Gotham one.

See this and more here

Ok, once I had decided what to make all that was left was doing it!

First step was covering the whole thing with white acrylic paint, I had to do about 3 layers to cover the spray disaster! Then I started to sketch with a pencil the poster, and add even more white paint around the main building

The white still doesn't cover completely, but since the whole thing uses very dark colours I wasn't too worried about the things outside the circle.

Then I started painting the buildings with black acrylic paint.

And then I added the gray.

Now this is technically it, but it looked so boring and matte. Maybe I could have added some shadows or texture like the original one, but I thought I was going to fuck it up...which makes my next decision complety irrational.

Around the time I was making this I saw this very interesting video by TED-ed, were they talked about how Van Gogh 'accidentally' illustrated turbulent fluid structures creating a luminance effect in his paintings, especifically in The Starry Night. And I thought: Wow that looks so fun, maybe I should grab the thing I've been working on for the last 2 days and try it for the first time, potentially fucking it up!😬

So I did.

And it turned out quite cool, I mean O B V I O U S L Y I am no Van Gogh, but meh...I like it, way better than the original canvas I had ♥

-Bárbara