More of My Crafty Past — Painting With Acrylics

I’m not a natural artist, but I’ve always been interested in painting. I find that the secret is to know what my skills and abilities are and paint things that are within those limits.

I bought some new acrylic paints a few months ago and have not tried them out until last night. And I’m pretty happy with what I was able to do.

This is a very small canvas — just 3×3 inches square. They are really fun to paint. They don’t take much time. And there’s not a big commitment to a huge project. I’m really happy with how this turned out and it felt really good to have my paints out again.

So today I painted another small canvas as I was listening to a webinar for work. It was a great way to keep my hands busy while my brain was occupied.

Then after out nightly three mile walk, I pulled out another canvas and finished up another painting. I’m really having fun with these little desert landscapes and they’re helping me feel warm!

I’m thinking I may paint six or nine little desert scenes and combine them into one wall hanging. Not sure how I’ll mount them all, but I have a picture of it in my head and I think it will work. I may have to enlist my wood working brother to make a custom frame for me.

I haven’t done much painting with acrylics, with the exception of using them to paint rocks. (I’ll do a post soon about my painted rocks.) I first tried painting with acrylics last January when some friends and I did a “Thirty mini canvases in thirty days” challenge. We were supposed to make one small piece of art every day for a month.

It was really challenging and forced me to step outside my comfort zone to try some new things. Here’s some of the things I made during this challenge with acrylic paints.

That is, of course, a sunflower. And next is a tree made from dots. You’ll see a lot more dots when I show you my painted rocks.

And then these really fun little floral landscapes made from dots. I just love these!

This one is 3×3.

This one is 4×4.

This one is 3×4.

And a little abstract dots painting, 3×3.

And more abstract dots. This canvas is 8×8 and this took forever! That’s a lot of dots, but i really like how this turned out!

Next is this cute little floral. I really want to try this with my new paints. The paints I used for this were pretty cheap.

And finally, I made this painting of Rico, but never got around to finishing all the details. This is 5×7.

A friend of mine commented that all of my paintings that I share on social media are so good. I laughed and told her that I don’t share the ones that are terrible. And I’m not going to share them here.

I’m not a great painter, but I’m enjoying something that is really outside of my comfort zone and my natural talents!