How to Create White Textured Abstract Art

Art doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated! Learn how to create a textured abstract art canvas for your home with this easy tutorial.

I’ll be the first to admit that my walls are pretty bare. One day I realized, my boys bedroom has four pieces of art work in one room. That’s like way out numbered compared to the rest of the house! 🙂 So I started searching for some neutral, textured abstract art. 

I came across this artwork from Studio McGee and fell in love with the soft, neutral look. I thought it would be the perfect inspiration for a fun DIY tutorial. Shoot, I even thought about buying it. The problem? The $928 price tag!

So instead, I spent around $27 bucks and about 30 minutes of my time. And this is what I ended up with…

I still need to frame it – which I will share that tutorial with you next week. But I think for right now – it looks pretty close to my inspiration! 

Now if this art style isn’t for you, I have a poll for you a little later in this post. So I’ll get to that in sec…

First, let’s talk about how I created this canvas art.

The great thing about this DIY canvas project is that you don’t need many art supplies. Heck, you might even already own everything you need to recreate this look. Listed below is exactly what I used.

The supplies you will need for this art project are:

20 x 20 Canvas

Gesso

Acrylic Paint – Titanium White

Acrylic Paint – Gray 

Painting Knife

Angled Brush

So the first step was to cover my canvas with a layer of the Gesso. The angled brush is great for applying this all over the canvas. The purpose of the gesso is to basically smooth the surface of the canvas and act as your primer. 

It will also prevent your canvas from soaking up all your paint. So this is an important step you don’t want to skip!

Since I am trying to create a textured look, I just applied one really good coat. But you can do two coats if you prefer. 

Because this whole abstract art I’m creating is white on a white canvas, I decided to add the tiniest bit of color to the canvas. So I mixed some of the white paint with two, tiny dots of the gray.

You can see in this image below the very light contrast.

The difference is really more subtle than then you may look. The picture below is a better representation. You can see the top half of the canvas has been painted with the grey tint and the lower half is still yet to be painted.

Once that was completely painted it was time to get creative with the texture. For this step I squeezed out large amounts of both the white paint and gesso.

Then I just started mixing the two products with my knife. I have to admit, this part with pretty fun spreading and smooching the paint all around the canvas. The whole idea is abstract right so there’s no mistakes! 

And once I thought I had achieved the textured look I was going for I stopped.  Then I left the art to dry over night and this is the final look. 

The last step to complete this art will be the frame and I think it’s only going to make the art look better. It will create more contrast between the wall and the art. You can find the canvas floating frame tutorial by CLICKING HERE.

So remember the poll I mentioned earlier. Well, a few weeks back I polled you my Instagram followers (if you are not following me on Instagram, I’d love for you too!) asking which style of art you wanted me to try and replicate. 

Obviously I chose B – the white textured abstract art featured in this post. But if “B” was not your style, would you want me to do another tutorial and replicate picture “A”? Just leave me a comment below and let me know! 

And if you liked this art, don’t forget to PIN this tutorial. 

And if you would like to learn how I finished the canvas in a floating frame, you can find that complete tutorial by clicking HERE.