I Made an Attempt at Canvas Painting Art Today

It wasn’t bad, but it still could use some improvement

Hanging out with my painting friend

I had a lot of time on my hands today. A friend of mine was waiting for her boyfriend to get off of work alone painting in the corner of a restaurant. I came over and asked if I could hang out and paint with her. We decided that since we were now officially hanging out today that we would make a day of it. Mike was still asleep and I needed a distraction. I wanted to buy some snacks from Walmart for the two of us but also for Mike and me. We went on a shopping trip to Walmart.

Snacks and paints

We had hours to kill. We bought salty, sweet, and fresh snacks from the store. The most desirable and delectable snack we had was the fruit platter. It consisted of mango, blueberries, pineapple, and melon. We also bought a strawberry-flavored cream cheese to go with it because we knew it would make an excellent dip. We took our bags of snacks back to the restaurant where she was waiting previously after our shopping trip and we sat at the table and brought out our supplies, both our snacks and our paint and canvas.

Not an art school student

I haven’t painted in years and the only time I ever really painted for someone else was in elementary school. I never went to art school and never took art in college. All I knew about creating art was making sure to keep the colors between the lines. Since I didn’t know what I’d be creating, I thought of a concept to get me started.

The concept

I wanted to recreate Mike and me as bears. This is an inside thing as Mike and I both consider ourselves to be “bears”. It’s one of our favorite animals. I was going to be a brown panda bear since I’m brown and half-Asian and Mike was going to be a brown bear with a ginger beard.

He’s lighter in real life, obviously, but I wanted him to be one of the tougher species of bears. Then we had our deceased cat, Jojo, with us in the picture. He was a gray and white furball and kind of chonky. Yeah, chonky, like a big chonker.

I realize I just said a made-up word three times in a row. That’s what we called him. Then I drew our pegacorn puppy stuffed animal, Bear, and made him alive in this painting.

Suspending reality

We are all in a stream with pink salmon enjoying a beautiful day in the forest as a whole family. The shore is made of rainbows because at this point my art is suspending reality. The landscape behind it is pink because it really is beautiful and makes the scene pop.

Then I have a couple of forest trees in the background. In front of the shore and between the trees and the river is a big red heart that is just planted into the ground. This is a scene of pure love for us to all be together.

Elementary school graduate and made with love

It kind of looks like a kid drew it much like the illustration I shared a while ago from my Canva experiment. I’m still getting myself used to the idea of trying to be an artist. I’m not going to say that I’m not proud of myself. It’s a cute scene and it’s good enough to graduate from my elementary school art class at the young age of 39.

I’m proud of it because it was made with love with a friend while we were enjoying our day, our snacks, and our conversation. I figured I’d give Mike and me something to have that I created to hang up in the tiny home so that we can liven up the background a bit. Here’s my attempt: