On the 30 day Painting Challenge

So here's a visual summary of my favorite bits of what happened over the last month:

Not a terrible painting for day1

First undersea-esque scene

A bit different, but still interesting

Odd but fun with the spots and translucency

Strange but happy making

Love the little dragon thing.  Not quite where I want to be, but getting there

And now here's the brainthink summary of what's happened.

Firstly, I am kinda surprised that I managed to do it.  Did I paint one thing every day for 30 days?  Nope.  I cheated, like many will have done to complete this project.  Some days (mostly days where I wasn't really home) I found this totally unachieveable, but I managed to make up for them on other days where my creative brain was firing a little better. 

Also, I didn't just paint 30 paintings.  Although I am definitely not totally happy with the majority of these paintings, there were others that just made me so unhappy they didn't even make the blog cut.  So I probably did more like 35 - 40 paintings in 30 days.  And that's pretty awesome.

So today is my first non-painting day, and I've felt a little at a loss.  My gear is still all set up at the table.  Nevertheless, I've decided not to paint today so I can have a think about where to next.

What this project has really solidified for me is that I can have some sort of an art practice despite the fact I run around after small crazy things all day.  I honestly didn't think I could.  Yes, there are quite a few limitations, but it's still possible.  And it makes me ponder the other possibilities of things I could add to my life.

So today I am researching free online courses.  A friend has been doing a poetry course online for free and it made me wonder what other free educational opportunities may be out there waiting for me.  The kind I can manage without time constraint in the little snippets of free time I have.  I love learning, and there are a few things in particular that I can see being of use to me in the near future.

And will I be continuing to paint?  Yes!  I now have a bunch of questions generated about where these paintings (well, painted drawings) should move to next.  I'm thinking I need to simplify and upscale, although I'm not sure whether it's the scale of the mark or just the paper that needs upscaling.  Because I work best in project form where I must be accountable at the end, I will try and set a fortnightly painting goal to achieve and blog about.  Hopefully that'll be enough to keep me working!

The next question I have to answer is what to do with all these paintings?  I want to keep some, but I can't keep them all.  Do I give them away?  Have a show?  Sell them?  Maybe someone out there in the interweb has some good ideas.