Daily Painting for a Month... and Longer!
All 32 8x8 paintings so far, attached with a magnetic tac to the wall.
I’ve been doing a daily painting for each of the last 32 days, and it’s been a wonderful learning experience. I can’t recommend it enough! I’ve gotten to stretch myself in a lot of ways, and although it’s been daunting at times (and logistically complex!), it’s also been a great deal of fun. So much fun, in fact, that I intend to keep going, and to release the best of these as the first Collection for sale on my website (more on that at the end of the post!). :)
We can learn the basics from teachers, and they can guide us as best they can, but the truth is if you really want to grow as an artist, you need to learn how to teach yourself. Anyone who’s read this blog knows I’m a great proponent of iteration as a self-teaching tool— mostly because it’s so good at helping us see our own practice from the outside. Over a month in to painting daily, I’m already very sure this is also an approach I’ll be incorporating into my future teaching curriculum, as well as my own practice as a painter.
Click through on an image below, and go to my Instagram account, where I share the story of each photo!
Day 1, Left Behind
Day 2, New Year’s Hike
Day 8, From the Train
Setup-
I started this because of the “Art Work Living” challenge from oil painter Mary Gilkerson. The original goal was to paint daily for 5 days. Goal reached! ;) Her advice was to paint small, use as big of brushes as possible (so you focus on the big shapes) and aim to finish your paintings in 20 minutes— not including prep and such. Even so, that time constraint is hard to hit. But as a watercolorist, if I use a blow dryer, I’ve found I can do many of these little 8” x 8” paintings in 25-35 minutes. Including prep and cleanup, it adds up to 45-50 minutes total. Perhaps 60 if I get wrapped up in a painting and lose track of time.
I keep an area at home set up for painting all the time. So prep is easier for me than it was in the past. I also pre-cut all of my sheets of paper, and have spent the time needed to pre-select a good amount of reference photos. After I’m done, I clean up my palette and brushes, etc (a task I normally rarely do!! …but which has helped with starting promptly while doing this challenge). All these little details make jumping in and getting going much easier. Mostly, the goal was to help myself get out of my own way. Hahaha.
Things started out easily enough. It was in a slow period with work, and I could dedicate the time. But it’s been harder recently, as work has picked up. And weekends have been consistently difficult— if any house projects come up, if we’re visiting anyone, going anywhere, etc., I have to be very conscious of scheduling-in painting time. But the “time management aspect” of the challenge is actually an element that I’ve come to appreciate. For the first time ever, I’m really working painting into my daily schedule. For real!! LOL. On my “painting days” (twice a week now) it’s easy, but on “work days” I get up a little early and paint around 645. One day, I actually brought my paints and painted at a jobsite during my lunchbreak— a first after 20 years!! And 30 days in, family members are now expecting that I’ll be painting each and every day. That’s helpful, because it gets us all on the same page.
Day 13, Creekside Reflections
Day 14, I Prefer the Reflections
Day 15. Plum Blossoms
How Daily Painting Helps Us Learn-
Mary spoke a lot about some of the basic advantages of painting daily, and it’s very similar to how I talk about iteration. Namely, to make real progress, IMO, we need to let go of our fear of failure, so we can start to take chances— explore new subjects, experiment more, compare technical results that we deliberately vary, etc. Whatever method works for you. Iteration can be a powerful tool for that. And, for sure, painting daily provides similar opportunities.
At first, the painting experience was just like normal for me, but slowly, as I began to paint each day, it dawned on me that I was going to paint again, and soon. That can be very liberating! Paintings become less precious, failure less demoralizing (although still totally irksome), more chances get taken. And that means growth.
When you’re doing something like this, you’re painting so much… that it’s hard not to make comparisons to other recent pieces or mistakes you’ve made, to become aware of habits you have, subjects you fall back on all the time, etc. Everything is still fresh in your mind, and that’s almost like a precondition for a seed… or new thought to germinate.
Suddenly, I find myself trying out all kinds of new subjects that I would have set aside in the past, or thought too simple for “a real painting”, or too abstract and not marketable, etc. I see little habits of my own, like pushing strong value contrast all the time (instead of using other types of contrasts, like hue or edges, etc), or color choices I always fall back on. Painting daily has provided me a space to try out new approaches— high key paintings, or new color relationships, new pigments, new compositions, etc. That has been really fruitful.
But for me, personally, the thing that has struck me the most is how important the mental work I do before I paint has become.
Day 19. Ready for Spring.
Day 23. Apple Harvest.
Day 24. Drapes in the Late Afternoon
Editing Your Subject-
Painting quick and small has taught me several things, but most important is that a big part of making a successful painting happens before I even pick up a brush.
For this format, my subjects really need to have strong shapes and strong contrast. Sometimes, when I paint big and slow, I can give the “story” more precedence, even if the composition is complex and full of (perhaps too much) detail. However, given the time and space constraints of the challenge (and, broadly speaking, I’ve been staying true to the flavor of the challenge), I can’t successfully paint complex subjects. I’ve tried (and failed). So, I need to pick subjects I can easily simplify— and that means strong shapes and bold contrasts. And that is often very good for creating compelling compositions.
Doing a painting in 30 minutes has also helped me practice editing. Some subjects just require more time, particularly if I want to add in a background. So, I’ve been experimenting with focusing just on the primary subject, and letting it rest on a white background. What’s been exciting is that I really have been enjoying some of these results. There’s a bold, graphic quality to the final product, which I like. But beyond that, going through this mental editing process helps me recognize what is really essential. And what isn’t essential, I discard. And I don’t mean simplify— I mean totally discard! :D
Finally, I’ve also been practicing zooming in. This has been very helpful for simplification and occurs entirely before I start painting. It started because I was painting squares from rectangular photos (a great way to force yourself to crop a composition) but it ended being a process I expanded upon. Now, I proactively zoom in even farther, as I aim more and more to make as clear as possible just what it is I want to paint.
The changes in my compositions have been so compelling to me, the dividends I’ve been getting from something that seemed almost incidental (the brevity and reduced size of the pieces) so surprising and beneficial, I’ve begun to wonder what it would be like to paint some of these subjects larger, using a really big brush on a giant piece of paper. Often, when I “grow” a piece, I zoom out, including more information. But I’ve liked how these cropped, square compositions have made me really decide (and share with my viewers) just what it is that’s important. Speeding the process up has also helped me choose what’s essential— working wet into wet and simplifying in a bolder manner than normal. I don’t want to lose that focus and simplicity, as I think it’s really playing into the strengths of watercolors— wet into wet work, the dance of brushwork, granulation, the texture of the paper, and lush washes.
I’ve recently also been making timelapse videos while painting. Click on these photos and it will take you to the Instagram posts with little 30 second timelapse videos as well!
Day 30. East Bay Vibe
Day 31. A Bay Bridge Kind of MOrning.
Day 32. Ripe.
If you’re enjoyed this post, and are interested in perhaps purchasing a painting eventually (either from this set or from future collections), please sign up for my new Art Collectors email list. It’s a list I’m building to better serve the needs of art lovers who are interested in my work. Subscribers will get early access to my collections as I release them, before they go public, and free shipping before the release!! If you click here, it will take you to the sign up page. :)