I am participating in Mary Gilkerson’s Art+Work+Living Five-Day Challenge, which is to paint a painting in 20-30 minutes every day for five days. The purpose is to develop a daily painting practice, using a knife or #6 brush or larger. I plan to add an to add a painting to this blog every day for 5 days.
And Day 5, January 22, 2018: Apple, 6×6 oils on hardboard. I painted this while looking at the Apple. This concludes the Five-Day Challenge, so now the question is, will I continue this daily painting practice? I intend to, at least puttering in the studio whether not I produce anything worth looking at. In the process of doing this, I also have straightened out a glitch in my Instagram account so that now it will post both to Instagram and to Facebook at the same time. It was something about how I had created the account, that it just would not post no matter how hard I tried. I ended up having to dissociate the accounts, delete them from my phone, and re-upload them, and then change the IG account to a business account, and then re-associate the accounts. Now I am learning all about hashtags.
Day 4, January 21, 2018: Aloe, oils on hardboard, 6×6. Last month I bought about 20 6×6 pieces of hardboard last month, planning to start a daily painting practice and not wanting to use expensive linen panels. I wanted to feel free to experiment and have less investment in the outcome, both emotional and financial. I realized I hadn’t primed them, so I gesso’d 12 of them, all that I had space for. I use clear gesso on panels or board that is not white; that way I don’t have to tone it to reduce the glare of white gesso. Now… what to paint? I have potted aloe on top of the microwave near the kitchen window, and it receives beautiful high-contrast morning light. I decided that would be my subject, and I squeezed out some greens that are not normally on my palette — sap green, thalo yellow-green, and viridian. (Normally I mix my greens, for plein air painting and for painting the figure.) For the Five-Day Challenge, we are supposed to be reducing the amount of time we paint, from 30 minutes to 20, not counting color-mixing. Since I mix as I go, I adidn’t worry about the time. My timer stopped me at 30. I squinted at my work to evaluate it — not enough contrast. I took another 10 minutes to add some darks, and I cleaned up some edges, and then added a few scalloped edges on some of the leaves, to help identify it as aloe. I’d like to give this subject a second try, reducing the amount of reflected blue light and making it more distinct. Also I will place the pot differently, so it doesn’t look like it is ready to fall off a table. I wasn’t thinking much about composition when I started this painting, just the luscious greens.
Day 3, January 20, 2018: Sunrise on Eden Drive, oils on canvas panel, 6×6. Today’s painting used a photo I recently took looking out over my yard from my front deck. My house has a bayou in my back yard, and behind the lot across the street from me, a freshwater creek, which together provide wonderful atmosphere on winter mornings when the air is colder than the water. I learned my lesson yesterday, today painting with a well-shaped brush. It’s a #6, as recommended by the guidelines for this project. A well-shaped brush can be turned on it’s edge to deliver very thin strokes. The wet paint created a little glare on the left side of this photo of my painting.
Day 2, January 19, 2018: Four Views of Merritt, oils on canvas or birch panels, 6×6 each. On Fridays, I enjoy studying the figure in the open studio with a model at the Foster Gallery on Grand Boulevard in Miramar Beach, just 10 miles from my home. Since I am doing this five-day challenge, I decided I would use figure painting to fulfill my challenge commitment. We break up the long pose into 20 minute segments, so I painted four 20-minute versions of the same pose, moving my easel for each segment so that I would have a different view. The first painting was on a canvas panel, and the other three were on clear-gesso’d birch. The small format was pretty restrictive, and painting with a number six brush was very difficult because it was not a well-shape brush, rather like painting with a dogs tail, I imagine. But no excuses, because I know some artists who can paint with a stick if they forget their brushes so it’s all a matter of experience.
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Each of the Four Views of Merritt are available to purchase!
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Day 1: January 18, 2018, Two Palms, oils on canvas, 6×6. Apologies for the glare on the canvas — it actually is pretty well covered — the canvas texture is showing because of the wet glare. It was difficult to put down my #6 brush after only 30 minutes. I’m not sure what’s happening with that gigantic branch hanging down on the right. So much refinement can be done in just a few more minutes, but I’m going to try to follow the rules for this Five-Day challenge. I was working from a photo on my iPhone, and was timing myself with my meditation timer app. I had app’d the photo into 3 values – black, white, and gray – with “Notanizer” so that I could simplify the darks and lights, and had sketched even more of the darks on a print-out from that app, to remind myself to make a workable silhouette with my darks from the get-go. When i started, I used pure ultramarine blue for my darks. Unfortunately I never got around to warming my trees so my eye tends to go to the warm grass in the foreground instead of to the trees. Now the decision — whether to keep it and refine it, or to wipe it off and salvage the canvas.