Day 30: "The Revelation"

I made it! 30 days of painting daily!

Here's my LAST painting in the series:

 

This is a tiny one - maybe 6" x 6". I am happy with the looseness and composition. I used a viewfinder which helped quite a bit, and added some of the porcelain shards we discovered in the creek yesterday.  This is the now-baked head of the same fish I painted two days ago. Still worth painting!

Thank you all for joining me. I have learned quite a bit. Let me run through the revelations that hit me over this 30 days.

1. Some days you just feel it

I went into some paintings just knowing they were going to work - and they usually did

2. Bristle brushes work better for me than soft nylon ones do

I like the way they push the paint around. Unfortunately, I didn't get to use any bristle brushes until day 28, when my wife brought me some from the states. They are so much better.

3. Sketching helps

Sketching out locations with a pencil or brush to get the right placement of objects helps a lot. I used to just attack the canvas without much planning - now I've discovered that often leads to blah compositions and awkward moments.

4. You really only need a few colors

Today's painting had four in it. Red, yellow, blue and white.

5. Plein air painting is much tougher than still life

Rain, climbing mountains, fast shifts in the light, trouble with atmospheric perspective... I need to get out with my easel more. This has been a terribly rainy month with rain most days - the rainiest yet - and so I didn't get nearly as much outdoor time as I had hoped. Maybe in the dry season! I'm committed to plein air painting and I need to do a lot more, but I've also decided that I can tell stories with still life, which is a new thing for me.

6. Daily painting has improved me

The last painting I did was much easier than the first. Each day I learned something new or built on a previous discovery. I need to keep doing this for a year!

Maybe I'll do just that.

Day 29: Fail Bridge

Despite threatening skies, I packed up my French easel and started up the road to the top of the mountain with my daughter in search of a vista we could paint.

We finally came to a small bridge and decided to stop and paint, as finding a good clear view was not happening.

A few minutes after we started, the rain came in. Not hard, but just enough to ensure we were in trouble!

This is all I managed to paint:

I ended up crouching and painting with the canvas beneath the work area of my easel so I could keep going but my colors went to mud and my view was poor, so... nothing great to report here. After a while we gave up and packed away everything... and the sky cleared!

My daughter convinced me that we should hunt for artifacts in the river, so we did that for a pleasant couple of hours in two different places. Beneath the bridge above, and further down on a friend's farm. We found an abundance of pottery and porcelain shards, plus old glass. I also found a clay Amerindian artifact of unknown use. I'll take pictures at some point - I'm dying to know what it is.

Overall, a great day... for everything but painting!

Day 28: Fish for Dinner

This already scaled, gutted and slit tuna provided an interesting subject:

 

This one I could feel was going to work as I painted it. The panel is larger - maybe a 13 x 13, too. I used a bristle brush for a lot of the work and was quite happy with the more aggressive paint application compared to the nylon brushes I had been using. 

Day 27: Coconuts

This little painting was done on an irregular piece of wood from a broken chair:

Not bad, but I think the eyes in the top coconut need to be readjusted for spacing.

Day 25 & 26: Failed Experiments

On day 25 I painted a very boring painting:

Then on day 26 I tried an experiment with gridding a photo, then transferring it to the panel but gave up on it.

I wouldn't even post these two here if I could help it, as neither shows well or feels finished. Thrift store art, right?

Day 24: Girl (Underpainting)

I decided to try my hand at a small portrait for day 24.

This is the underpainting in black and white - all I managed to finish. Pretty close likeness.

Day 23: Bat House

Day 22: Bananas and Artifacts

I like this one a bunch.

 

Yesterday afternoon I took the children down to the creek to swim and while there, we hunted for more scraps of china. I found the one with the green patterns then and it was the perfect color to place with a bunch of bananas.

 

 

I'm not sure what I'll paint next, but I am enjoying these pottery shards. We shall see.

Day 21: "Artifacts II"

Another little one. It looks better in person, as the glare on the rough surface threw off the photo a bit.

Day 20: "Artifacts"

Yesterday I had only a little canvas so I decided to paint with a small brush and go for realism.

 

It looks even more realistic in person. From a few feet away it's almost a photograph.

The children and I find a lot of broken pieces of Colonial-era china in the river, so I lined them up around this big snail shell we also found. 

I like the effect. I'm going to paint more shards today.

Day 19: Sunset in the Mountains

 

This was a fun one to paint. It's bigger than most I've done so far and I had only a little while available so I painted with big strokes with a 1" brush. This view is on top of the big hill/mountain across the road from us and getting to the peak requires pressing through the sometimes dense jungle. I actually dropped the painting on accident while climbing back down but it rolled, then landed face up. Close one! I'm glad it didn't get wrecked because I'm rather fond of this painting.

Day 18: Fungi

I went wandering down the hill yesterday afternoon with my daughter and we hunted for fungi in the forest we could bring back and paint. It's been raining a lot lately and there was a good assortment.

I had an odd, worm-eaten piece of driftwood for today's "canvas" and I decided to trace out three circles upon it to paint three different specimens.

 

Not bad, but I'm not sure it's really complete. I will go back another day and touch up the highlights.

Day 17: Pipe

Just a little painting.

Days 14, 15 and 16

This has been a tough week. My first painting got cut short due to rain and a showing of the property where we live.

The second painting didn't happen until late at night, since my model was indisposed. And then, once I had gotten the painting roughed in and knew where she was, she tired of standing and I was left with a hatchet job of a painting.

 

On Wednesday, though, I had a smaller canvas and more time so I was able to actually finish a painting.

 

The sense of distance is better on this one and I feel like it's got that certain something.

Not a very good week so far, but we'll see if the rest of it goes better. My car is sitting dead at the end of the road so I have been distracted.

 

The first week: video wrap-up

I need to take photos of the last three days of painting in my 30-day painting challenge. Hope to do so tomorrow.

I keep getting caught up in my novel writing (I hit 30k words this evening!) and not getting free until the light is failing; however, I did manage to post a video this morning covering the challenge, my goals, and the first seven days. Enjoy!

Day 13: Do Not Disturb

Just a little 6" x 6" canvas from Sunday, taking me through day 13 of my 30-day painting challenge:

 

My paintings  are starting to look and feel better. This is good for me.

Day 12: Passionfruit

I like the way the light and shadows turned out on this one. Just a little painting.

Day 11: Hog Plum Trees in the Distance

It rained all afternoon yesterday, spoiling my plans to paint at the beach. Instead, I painted one of the limited views off the screen porch in the late afternoon.

Since I was quite unhappy with some of the greenery in a few of my previous paintings, I decided to use this painting to practice the shape and color of the trees against the sky.

Not much of a painting to hang on the wall but it was good practice.

Day 10: Campari

This was painted on a piece of battered driftwood: a strangely shaped plywood chunk.

I didn't get to start on this one until the evening. It rained all day and I was working on a variety of projects - life got away from me but I still managed to keep my daily streak going. I'm feeling better with the brush now. The paint and the colors are finally doing what I want them to do. You can see my loose brushstrokes nicely in this detail:

I'm getting better by the day.

Day 9: Thomas and Espresso

I was trying to decide what to paint when along comes a two-year-old with a handful of trains. Inspiration struck!

Fortunately, she graciously allowed me to borrow Thomas or else this painting wouldn't have happened.

Since I love coffee, I put him rounding the espresso pot.

Day 8: Coffee and Guava

This one turned out well:

 

I could "feel" it turning out as I painted - it just worked. Sketching with a pencil, then painting, has been a help.

Now I need to figure out what to paint today.

Day 7 of 30: Impressionist Marina

 

I tried to post this picture on the 7th but the internet went down. 

Went out to paint at the marina, found a good sailboat for a subject, docked a little ways out from the pier and started painting. Before I got all the details in, along comes this big, new, ugly catamaran and parks between me at the sailboat. Foiled! I decided to paint as I could from the glimpses of the boat behind... and then went... heck with the details. Let's go Impressionist.

Day 6: Half a Grapefruit

This is just a little canvas, done on Sunday evening after church and a trip to the beach. I didn't get fancy and decided to forgo the background. Just a cheery half-a-grapefruit, almost all painted with a little brush.

 

Today I'm off to the local marina to paint... hopefully that goes well. I have been frustrated thus far, though I like the little painting above as well as the papaya... and my last seascape turned out decently. Maybe batting a little less than 50-50... which is, of course, why I've undertaken this challenge. I need to push push push.

Day 5: Half a Pumpkin

I don't like this one. Canvas was too small and the details just don't pop. Fortunately, I'm done with it and can move on to the next thing. Over! I'm over it!

Day 4: Papaya!

I was going to hit the local beach and paint this afternoon but discovered the batter on my car was dead. A door had been accidentally left cracked open... for three days. I was very frustrated, but unpacked my painting supplies and went back inside to find something worth painting. I settled on a papaya a friend of mine gave us this week as a gift. Turned out to be my best painting yet in the series.

 

I like that you can still see the head of a screw sticking out of my scrap wood "canvas."

I will be putting together a "week 1" video this evening and hope to post that soon.

Day 3

Just finished Day 3. It's the biggest one yet, at 12" x 20" or so.

Took me a couple of hours. I'm not happy with the depth - it should feel much deeper. I need to work on that. The background isn't cool enough and the foreground isn't warm enough. A little stuck in that muddy middle. My favorite part is the powerlines.

Day 2 of 30: Cottages above the Shore

Much happier with today's painting!

 

As you can see, it's just a little one. 

I had Naples yellow, ivory black, cadmium red deep, titanium white, cobalt blue (hue) and sap green on my palette. Total painting time about an hour. The houses look a little flat to me, but I didn't have a real tiny brush to make them quite right... that and my sense of perspective is a bit out of whack. Quite happy with the dark sand, though. I also like the rough wood grain and nail holes showing through the paint.

Painting Challenge: Day 1 of 30, "Cocoa in the Orchard"

I painted in the cocoa orchard this afternoon and did my best to capture a decent image with the very limited Zorn palette of yellow ochre, titanium white, ivory black and cadmium red deep.

It came out looking like a faded old magazine illustration or something. Very weird.

 

I dunno. 

I think I'm adding blue tomorrow. This palette would be great for skin tones and figure painting, though. I just think it looks too flat for plein air, especially in the bright and cheerful tropics.