I rarely make long posts. I’ve been a busy bee. I was out of town for a couple of days but still kept up with the challenge except for one day. To make up for it I did two pieces on one day. Today I actually did about 4 pieces. I’m going to break this down bit by bit.

Last Thursday I did two pieces that weren’t paintings. Other mediums can definitely influence your painting both in quality and style. You can learn from any creative endeavors. My semi-e group contracted Kimonos instead of painting them.

The next day I did got back to painting. I took a photo of the Grand Canyon many many moons ago. I’ve always wanted to paint it. I started off with the tree a dark green, because that was what was in the photo. But given the limited palette of the rest of the photo, it just didn’t look right. So I made it more of a silhouette and used a dark blue. It makes for a much more cohesive painting.

I went away for a long weekend but took my paints and brushes with me so I could keep up with my “Painting” a day challenge. The left was kinda of an urban sketch with watercolor. The right is a landscape that I already painted once but in water soluble oils. I like the water color better.

Yesterday I must have been in an odd state of mind. The two paintings once again illustrate that just because you have a photograph in front of you doesn’t mean you have to follow it to the T. I love the title I decided on for the pears. “Leaning Toward Love”.

Sadly my latest efforts were awful. Failure teaches us though, in many ways. Today I was attempting to revisit a technique that I loved back in my college days. What I learned was that I need to do some research to refresh my memory. I was attempting to do some landscape mono prints. At first I tried using acrylics on my plate, because I don’t have the etching inks I used in college. Then I tried using water soluble oils. They are closer to the inks. In the meantime I remembered that I would wet printing paper before pulling the print. Those two changes helped a bit, but it still didn’t work.

Even though I’d done the above, I decided to go back to a piece I started in January. I just wasn’t happy with it. Even though I feel it’s a better painting, I’m still not happy with it. So more work some day.