Mondrian Abstract

Artwork by Piet Mondrian is oddly divisive; his work is the type that most people refer to when they say they don't get modern art. This kind of stuff:

Maybe it's so utilitarian because it was the Great Depression?  Imagination is expensive.

Bold lines, sharp angles, seemingly random colors and placement.  It's aesthetic, to some.  Personally, I'd never hang this kind of artwork in my home, simply because it's not my thing.  I can appreciate it (kinda?), but overall, meh.

This kind of artwork on nails?

Works a whole lot better!

The lines are... mostly straight.

It was surprisingly easy to do.  I painted Zoya Jolie in a wide swath down the right side of the nails, ensuring I didn't cover the left third at all, and that the line between then was relatively straight.  When that dried, I painted Zoya Goldie starting at about the third mark away from the cuticle, maintaining the side line.  There was room for minor error since the black would be covering it, but not too much room.  The dots are there because dots are awesome, obviously.  Not that Mondrian ever actually included them.

Layer of top coat, and it's done.  Obviously, any two colors would work great instead of the Jolie and Goldie, so long as the second color is opaque enough to cover the first - and maybe not even then.  Lines can be rearranged, colors added.  This is super versatile.

And probably one of my favorite designs yet.

A Tale of Two Gradients

I love nail gradients.

But I had very little idea of how to do them, so I experimented. Here are the results.

 That middle brown looks a lot like milk chocolate. Yum.

In the first, I simply painted a base color (Zoya Dea), then painted on top of it from the cuticle and tip using Zoya Cheryl and Goldie.

Advantages:

• Thick, vibrant colors.
• The gold had a really cool fire effect.
• No additional tools required.
• No wasted polish.

Disadvantages:

• Time-consuming.
• Technical.
• To get that really cool fire effect of the gold, I had to start with just enough polish on the brush to get a solid color on the tip, and then have it taper 1/4" in.  It was complicated to get right.
• It's not really a gradient, but more of a neapolitan ice cream look.
• Thick paint means a loooooong time to dry, and higher chance of getting air bubbles.

 Despite the disadvantages, I did really like this design and was sad to have to remove it.

 The second design... well, it wasn't very photogenic:

 I wore this with a purple-and-white print shirt.

I used four colors: black, Cheryl, Merlot and Zoya Kamilah.  For this design, instead of painting directly on the nails, I painted onto a makeup sponge, and then pressed the sponge to the nails.  I learned quickly that for decent coverage, I needed to reload the sponge between each use.  In the picture, you can see that the pinky nail has very deep, solid color, but the pointer and middle fingernails are thin enough to see the light nail tip.  Whoops.

Advantages:

• Quick and easy.
• It's a real gradient.
• Therefore, it looks very cool (despite the inexplicable failure of the camera to make it look that way).

Disadvantages:

• Easy to forget to reload the sponge, so it's easy to end up with thin paint on a few nails.
• Requires use of a makeup sponge.
• Wasted a lot of paint due to deep soaking into the sponge.
• Messy - required a lot of cleanup.

Despite the weird image quality, I actually liked this design better than the first, because it's a true gradient, and unless you're inspecting it closely you can't really see how thin the polish is.

It also looks like actual fire, which is awesome.