I’m about to challenge myself to a painting a day for 30 days again. It is one of my favorite challenges to do. I’ve been very busy in the studio everyday this past month anyway and I’ve been enjoying putting my nose to the grindstone. I will be working on my own stuff, but also to produce pieces for an upcoming show of JAG’s at the library, called “Naturally”. Nature is a constant subject in my art and a show calls for an autumnal feel is right up my alley. Autumn has always been my favorite season. As I went through my photos for subjects I came up with 54! I’ve narrowed it down to 39. Hence, a painting a day for at least a month is warranted. I’m hoping I have another challenge at the end of this one. I’m hoping I create so many wonderful works of art, that it is a challenge to pick which ones to enter. These are some of my possibilities…

I’m pretty sure most of us artists prefer one over the other. I’ve been a busy bee. There are three shows coming up I want to enter. The deadlines are all within 4 days of each other, the last being the 30th. One show is : “Roses, Roses” at Wehner’s School of Music. One is “View from my Window” at the Art Center Cooperative and one is at FSCJ Kent Campus and is a Jacksonville Artist Guild show called “Express Yourself” (I haven’t decided yet what I’m entering in that one). Here are my entries for the other two… You will recognize one of them. I like the fact that my three for the roses show are all very different (a mixed media, a traditional watercolor and a combo mono print and watercolor with pearlescent paints). That one is not really even my style, but I like it.

Sometimes that’s a happy moment, but there are different reasons for it to be a happy time. This time I’m happy because it’s been such a long drawn out process with many difficult moments. I like the results and am glad that I stuck with it.

I thought it wise for me to take a break from Interior Construct II. I’m almost done with it; I don’t want to screw it up.

So today I worked on an organizational project, that’s been on my list for a while. I researched various watercolor brands and which of their pigments are transparent or semi-transparent. I’ve been painting with watercolors for decades, but I’m not one to really pay attention to the technical details. However, I’ve decided I really want to paint with only transparent colors if possible. I also got a new palette in May and needed to fill it! Turns out most of my tubes on hand were transparent. I already know some of my own favorite hues and how they interact with others I use. I want to fine tune things while exploring the different brands versions of the colors I like. Over the next year, I hope to settle on a single palette of limited colors- a warm and cool of the primaries and some earth tones. There were probably 2 or 3 other simply because I’ve fallen in love with them. My new palette will probably be made up of my 3 favorite brands: Danielle Smith, Holbein, and Sennelier.

I am so excited and honored to have been accepted into the Sumi-e Society of America’s 64th annual exhibition. This will be an online only exhibit. The link will be  sumieshow.org but it won’t be active until next month sometime. My piece is of the Jacksonville Zoo’s Asian garden. I used a technique that I learned about in the Sumi-e Society’s quarterly newsletter. You can use milk as a resist! I keep meaning to try it as a mask in my regular watercolors.