Glowing Wall Art

So recently I've been doing a little home decor stuff. I should rather call it dorm decor. Well, I'm back to my college dorm as the lockdown restrictions are lifted here in India. I'm an artist by passion and an engineering student. What better way to show off my hobby and skill than to make a wall-hanging art piece that glows?

This is a modified version of the wolverine artwork that I made three years ago. This version is not only better in terms of durability, but also perfect for modern home decor!

So sit back and read ahead as I share how I made this cool wolverine glow-art.

Pieces of wood

Acrylic paint

Pencil

Carbon paper (optional)

Small nails

Hammer

LED strip (I used Rice lights)

Power supply

Cellophane and electric tape

Now you can buy pieces of wood for this. But, I had a broken carton lying on my terrace for quite a while. I carefully removed four pieces of wood from the side. These are about 12cm X 24cm each which was perfect for my requirement. I needed four of these to make a good canvas. You can decide on the dimensions for your canvas based on your needs, there are no restrictions on this.

I then used two thin rectangular sticks of wood and nailed them on the back of the four initial wood pieces as shown to make the canvas rigid. I later added a bit of wood glue between adjacent pieces of wood to make sure they are strongly held in place.

This is the fun part!

Draw your design on the wood with a pencil. You can draw something on your own or use a reference from a book or the internet like I did. One easy way to get an accurate drawing is to print your design from the internet and use carbon paper to trace it on the wood. Make sure it is as neat and accurate as possible because once you start painting on it, there is no going back!

Once my drawing was ready, I used black acrylic paint to, well, paint! While you could use any colour or combination of colours, a single dark colour looks best on wood. But you are free to experiment.

Now it's time to brighten things up.

For this, you can either use LED strips or rice lights like I did. The reason why I used rice lights is simple. Firstly, they come with a power supply attached, and secondly, they run on 5v and not 12v. So I will not have wires hanging from my painting. Even if I need to power them externally, I can attach a USB cable and directly power it from a 5v phone charger or a battery bank.

Although one disadvantage I noticed is the low brightness of rice lights as compared to LED strips. I could improve things slightly by making multiple layers of the light strip.

It is as simple as sticking your strip behind the canvas. If you are using LED strips, make sure they are facing towards the wall (once hung) and not sideways.

Now all that is left to do is hang it to the wall. Make sure there is some space between the wall and the painting so that the LEDs will be able to reflect sideways and disperse a bit farther from the painting.

My lights were a bit too dim in the morning, despite making multiple layers. I do plan on replacing them with warm white LED strips. I also plan on experimenting with blue LED strips. Anyways, for now, this looks pretty good, especially at night.

If you try it out too, I would love to see how it looks, so do share it in the I made it section.