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.

Week 4 of the 30 Day Painting Challenge

Day 22: Sea slug emerges

Day 23: Standard Jelly

Day 24: Flowers Love Acid Rain

 Day 25: Flotsam and Jetsam

Day 26: In a Puff of Smoke

Day 27: Wallpaper for microbes

Day 28: Unusual School 

Day 29: Psychedelic Catfish

Day 30: Tiny Whale

 

Week 3 of the 30 Day Painting Challenge

Day 15:  The Genie Appears (unintentional) collaboration with Etta

 Day 16: Happy Amoeba

 Day 17:Multicoloured bloodcells

Day 18: Mushroom Fantasy

Day 19: Dancing Crab

Day 20: Tangled Swan

Day 21: Confused Scorpio

In all honesty this week has felt a bit meh.  Last week was great, but I felt a bit stuck following the same path the whole time so tried something a bit different again this week.  Not super stoked with the results, but have still enjoyed playing with paint, making marks, and attempting to replicate marks. 

Mushroom fantasy is probably my pick of the week.  The marks feel slightly less inhibited than other ones (which makes sense, as they were cos I was in a hurry) which makes me feel like upscaling will be on the agenda when I start a new painting project.  These works are around A5 - so pretty small.  I think they might be more interesting if I blew them way up to something like A1 - but then I'll have to find different tools to work with, which may also render interesting results.

I think I'll have to get my thinking cap on to go into week 4... 

Week 2 of the 30 Day Painting Challenge

So this second week is off to a better start because I've decided to scan all the images in rather than photographing them with a bad camera.  Duh!  Oh well, concussions are a great excuse for all bad decisions. 

So far, I'm really liking the direction this week seems to be taking and I'm no longer bored of this project.  In fact, I think maybe after this project I'll embark on another project called 70 drawings in 7 days - which is far more similar to my first year studying design at Unitec - which is a good place to revisit to revive the pretty dead practice that is my painting life.

This week is making me interested in paint again.  And especially watercolour.  Which is good cos (again) there is no other painting medium that is plausible for me to use at the moment. 

Day 8: Green Steam

Day 9: Hungry for Anemones

Day 10: America Fish

Day 11: Sneaky Jellyfish

Day 12: Wounded Whale

 Day 13: Lonely Catfish

Day 14: Thoughtful Angler

  

I'm feeling much more positive coming out of this week than I was the last!  The project has kinda started to go its own way, and I'm feeling more confident that I can follow that path rather than worry about having diverted from the initial idea as I am happy with the results. 

My favorite painting this week is probably America Fish.  I am just enjoying the play of colour and layers of paint, and how paint moves and changes and plays together depending on how wet or dry it is, and how paint is placed on paper.  This is all baby watercolour stuff but it's fun and new territory for me (despite majoring in Painting at Unitec I knitted my way through a lot of my degree).

Week 1 of the 30 Day Painting Challenge

So I decided to take on the 30 Day Painting Challenge this month.  Because my last attempt at an art project did not go so well, I decided to simplify so that this time I would actually manage to get through the whole project and not go crazy - especially considering there's an extra kid in the mix these days.

Because I have little time and little personal space, any kind of big painting project is just not feasible (toddlers and oils?  Are you kidding me?)  So small-scale watercolours was the obvious medium of choice.  For me this is almost new territory.  I've never really explored watercolour and am very excited to explore them.  In terms of subject matter I needed something that was easily sourced and required no brain.  As Etta has just gotten the painting bug at Playcentre I thought hey, why not do that thing that's been done many times before, and replicate her drawings/paintings myself.

At the end of the project I'll post images of her paintings that I've used as inspiration for this project.

Day 1: Orange Bird

 Day 2: Bent Crochet Hook with Wool

Day 3: Green and Orange

Day 4: Serendipity

Day 5: Snake Invasion

Day 6: Orange laser worm

Day 7: Blue  Llama

Man!  This week went fast like most weeks these days.  I didn't find the challenge that hard - but I did find sitting with paintings I don't like hard.  When you are out of practice of making vast quantities of work regularly and knowing you'll probably only like a few of them, it's hard.  I had a great difficulty not to overwork things, as the subject matter was simple, and seemed like it was not enough.  Many of these appear overworked to me.  I do think Blue Llama is the pick of the bunch now, and a good starting point to go into week 2 with.