Having to stay at home made me rediscover my passion for arts and crafts. I used to do plenty of them, as you can tell from this blog, but ever since I moved abroad last September, I was focused on building my new life and didn’t spend much time crafting at all. Luckily, the spark was reignited and my flat is now cluttered with crafts in progress and art supplies. And I like it that way!

I absolutely love reptiles (have you seen my trip to a reptile expo?) and geckos are among the cutest creatures on this planet, if you ask me. Unsurprisingly, for my first ever acrylic painting on a canvas, I chose to attempt painting a gecko.

I started by covering the edges of the canvas with masking tape, to secure a white frame around the image. Then, I chose three colours for the background gradient. This painting was just an experiment to learn how to work with a canvas, so I didn’t put much thought into the design and went all in with the colours.

I added little dots on the background using a toothbrush and bigger and smaller bubbles using a  plastic bottle cap and a Sharpie cap.

Then, I painted the base of my gecko.

And last, I added the gecko’s pattern and other details.

My expectations for this very first painting were rather low, so I’m extremely happy with how it turned out. I thought it would look great on the wall that already has a gecko sticker (can you tell that I love geckos?).

Sadly, the noise of a canvas falling to the floor woke me up the following night. The canvas is intact (phew!), but my wall now has two huge marks from just about 12 hours of having blue tack on it (which I used to avoid making holes in the wall of a rented flat). I’m moving flats in about 2 months, so I’ll wait with hanging the canvas until I’m in the new place.

All in all, I loved experimenting with acrylics on a canvas. I have quite a few blank canvases left and some paintings already in progress, so expect to see them on the blog soon. 🙂

Check out my other crafts too!

• DIY