Daily Painting
I recently discovered the concept of daily painting from Carol Marine’s book “Daily Painting: Paint Small and Often to Become a More Creative, Productive, and Successful Artist”. This was exactly the type of painting strategy I was looking for. I recently felt frustrated after spending two months on a large painting. I only have a few free hours per week to actually paint, and I want to feel like I’m accomplishing more.
The idea of daily painting is pretty clear in the book title. Paint one small painting per day, or whatever frequency works for you. I can paint something new every session, and suddenly a world of possible subjects opens up. I can experiment with new styles, and practice brushwork and color mixing. My goal is to paint a few times a week - as long as I feel like it and am having fun. And if I don’t like the finished product, I hardly lost any time working on it.
My current goal is to loosen my brushwork. I want to apply more confident strokes, and leave them without too much blending. Here are a few small daily paintings I’ve completed.
Dried Hydrangea - 8 x 10, oil on gessoed panel.
Small Potatoes - 9 x 12, oil on canvas
Three Lemons - oil on gessoboard, 6 x 8
Blue and Yellow - 4 x 6, oil on gessoboard
I’m really happy with how the bottle turned out, and I love the color scheme. I still need to work on painting these little plates, as I tend to mess around too much with the shadows in the curvature.
Red Onion sketch - 6 x 6, oil on gessoboard. I got lost in the cast shadow a bit here, and cut too deep into the left side of the onion, so now it almost looks shallot shaped. I fiddled with the shadow too much. I still feel the onion itself was a success and would like to try again.
