Lessons Learned: Daily Painting Project - Part I

 

 Prairie Fade-Out (detail)

I am in the midst of my fourth "Daily Painting Project" and the first six of twelve paintings are complete! Here's the interesting twist... I am donating 100% of the sales to the Collective Voice 2019 trip to Toronto!!! Each original 6x6 inch painting is $100 (my regular price for this size), so if all twelve paintings sell I will be able to donate $1200 to help fifty awesome local Grade Nine students go on an educational trip they will never forget! Please read this post for more information.

I am thrilled with the response the project has received and I am equally thrilled with how it is unfolding for me personally. Right off the bat I made a conscious decision to be observant of the lessons I was learning with each painting. In fact, I will not start one of these 6x6's without having a goal or challenge in mind. I am even making notes after each painting is finished! I've always been a huge proponent of painting small and often, but, with this project, the heightened awareness of my learning has really reinforced what a wonderful role painting small plays in my art practice .

Below are the first six paintings, all sold, and the goals/challenges and lessons I have associated with each. If you are curious about the remaining days of the project, please go to my Facebook or Instagram (links on right side of this blog) as that is where the work is being posted daily.

Prairie Fade-Out

- My photo resource was actually a winter picture I took earlier this year. Since I didn't want to paint a snowy scene, I had to 'make-up' the land mass and imagine what the golden sunlight might look like on it.

- I challenged myself to mix oranges/yellows and pinks that were not harsh or garish and I challenged myself to use NO BLUE! :)

Sweet Solitary Tamarack

- I used a new product on my underpainting which I had only experimented with once before, my Gamblin Fast Matte

- I limited my palette to Ultramarine Blue, Alizarin Crimson, Yellow Ochre and Burnt Umber with a tiny touch of Cadmium Yellow for the little Tamarack. Instead of Titanium White I used Titan Buff. I generally do not like limiting my palette this much. :)

Distant Canola & Close Cattails

- I knew the challenge here would be simplifying the grasses and cattails in the foreground. I was right.

- An unexpected challenge was the values! I had to figure out how to get a rich dark blue in the lower part of the water without losing the detail of the dark greens of the grasses. Lots of wiping occurred on this one.  

Complementary Storm

- Purple and yellow are complements on the colour wheel and creating a stormy prairie scene with these two colours was the challenge. It is hard to see in this photo but the lightest areas of the sky have a very pale yellow happening.

Dusk In a Ravaged Land

- The photo resource I used was from my 2013 painting and canoe trip in the La Ronge area. I have never used it before because it's a rather boring snapshot from a gray, overcast afternoon (it wasn't actually dusk). The challenge was to get creative and make an interesting painting.

Clear Evening Sky at Ski Beach

- In reality my photo resource had clouds in the sky, but I didn't care about them. What I loved was the beautiful glow of the sky behind the clouds and on the water, so I focused on that.

- I wanted to experiment with the gradation of the sky both from top to bottom and from left to right. I would now like to play with this idea on a larger scale.



Stay tuned for the next six paintings and the lessons learned from them.