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.

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

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time organizing and cleaning up my home 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 Folkart metallic acrylic paints* I got for the paintings I made in 2016.

My first finished abstract painting ever. 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 metallic 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 acrylic 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 the latest 4th gen 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 on the bed while I worked on this. 





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