Last fall, I took a ten day trip to Italy that more or less changed my life. But one of the things I came back with – besides an expanded waistline from all the food – was a deep love of the Fleur-de-Lis, which is the emblem of the city of Florence.  When I started thinking about decorating the master bedroom in the new apartment (yes, six months after I moved in because that’s how I roll), I wanted to make a painting that incorporated the symbol in some way.

The Fleur-de-Lis

So I started Googling Fleur-de-Lis paintings and came across a surprising number that used the symbol against a checkered harlequin background.  I fell in love with the combo because it would a perfect compliment to our new bedspread, which as you might recall, looks like this:

After the jump, part one of how I am making the painting to match!

First, I had to figure out how the heck I was going to make harlequin checkers, since they’re not so easy to sketch out. Using a pencil and a ruler, I finally figured out a system.

Draw a horizontal line, two inches in long. Make a dot at the one inch mark, in the middle.

Put your ruler vertical across the dotted line, putting the two-inch mark of the ruler where your dot is.

Draw a vertical line four inches in length.

Now, connect the ends to form your checker (it should look like a diamond.)

Repeat, only now, you’re going to draw your vertical line first. Use the bottom point of your diamond as the new place to start your vertical line. (I found it easier to go down that to create checkers going across.) Obviously, you can adapt these ratios to fit the size checker you want.

I practiced a few times on a scrap sheet of paper (as you can see above) before drawing directly onto the canvas.  You’ll see – it gets a little messy once you do start to go along, but the smudges are okay.  You’re going to paint over them anyway.  I started in the top left-hand corner of the canvas, working my way down and going in rows.  Warning: this is very time consuming and you’ll want to rush, or toss the ruler. Ignore that feeling.  Doing this work correctly saves you a headache later (I’m speaking from experience. I thought I had got it down pat the first time sans ruler, only to discover upon finishing the stenciling, that all my checkers were different sizes and crooked. And I had to erase and start again. You won’t want to do this. Trust me.)

Now, it’s time for the fun part!  Again, heed my warnings and trust me when I say, go for a really nice acrylic paint. You’ll see in this first pass here, I used craft paint (because I’m lazy) and the quality is just not good.  The canvas shows right through. Unless you’re a glutton for punishment and want to paint over the same thing 15 times, just go for the good stuff off the bat and you’ll have the project finished in no time.  (Eventually, I bought brown acrylic paint and in part two, you’ll see the color is much richer.)

Next week, I’ll show the finished result, including adding in the blue, and how I got the Fleur-de-Lis on there, which I made red just for an unexpected pop. Stay tuned!