Making New Art After a Very Long Break

Here it is… My first two finished artworks after a 5 year break! The last series I made was when I did the food art for the 2018 Ontario Invitational exhibit with my late husband Tom. After that life got in the way and before I knew it five years had passed. I’ve thought about making art in the last few years but never actually got around to it; I even bought about 30 canvases, two easels, watercolors, new paints, etc. I put a lot of pressure on myself in the past whenever I took long breaks, and I think that’s what intimidated me to pick up a brush or a pencil. In my mind I made it a bigger deal than it needed to be.

Portrait of Mr. Gold made on Procreate for iPad (2022 version)

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time organizing and cleaning up my house and thinking about how I want to update and decorate it. For the master bedroom I’ve been wanting some large blue and gold abstract paintings to go on the walls above my bed. I figured this would be a fun project to work on with no pressure and it would be a good opportunity to experiment with the new acrylic paints I got in January.

I made my first abstract painting this week and tested out some of the acrylic medium samples I got from Golden acrylics. I also used a palette knife in some parts but I don’t think there was enough paint on the canvas. And I used some of the metallic paints I got for the art I made in 2016.

My first finished abstract painting. Yay! I used my favorite yellow color - Yellow ochre and some gold craft metallic paint.

Close up of the brush strokes. I don’t think you can see the gold color that well on the photo. 

My second abstract painting in progress. I added some glitter modge podge. I used Pthalo blue on this one, and added some light and coarse molding paste from the Golden paints sample kit I requested. You can see the thick texture in the white areas at the top. I’ll probably add some more silver metallic paint too.

Mr. Gold checking out the 2nd abstract painting. He looks like an art critic cat 🧐

Next I decided to work on a digital piece. A few months ago, I bought myself an iPad Pro, an Apple Pencil and the Procreate app to work on digital art. For years I’ve been wanting to make a painting of Gold using this photo Tommy took. I love how the eyes turned out. The Procreate app is so cool because it even makes a time lapse video of the entire process.

Love the iPad Pro! I’m able to do a split screen and see the reference photo while I work on the digital drawing/painting. Mr. Gold was sleeping in the bed while I worked on this.