Day 11/40 - neon P&G, 5x7, painted 11-20-10

Had a great day, sat down to do the daily painting and felt like a challenge.  Well, actually, I glanced at the neon bracelets on my arm as I was preparing to paint and decided I was up to a challenge....why not paint them?  

The actual bracelets

I thought I had the perfect colors for these two bracelets:

Turns out the green was a touch cooler than that, and the red was a touch warmer...so the mixing commenced (here's the palette shot):
 

I think I got the idea across (that they're glowing)...maybe?  This is far from photo-realistic, but I challenged myself, and I feel good about it.  I learned that I need to work on ellipses, and that neon colors are hard to mix (without having neon oil colors--does anybody make those??), and learning is always worthwhile. 

Day 10/40 - green ribbon #2 2.5x3.2, painted 11-19-10

Decided to try something a little different today.  I've got these tiny ACEO-sized canvases, so I used one of them to do another green ribbon today.  I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, but it feels a bit empty.  Maybe next time I'll arrange the ribbon to take up more space on the drape.

For a better idea of the size of this painting, here's a shot of the setup and the palette:

Day 9/40 - green ribbon #1 5x7, painted 11-18-10

Dancing till my feet hurt may have left me too tired for this subject.  Compared to "red ribbon #1," this green one is terrible, just terrible.  I was trying to be "looser" and just get basic values in without worrying as much about blending everything together, but still, I think I painted better ribbons than this one a year ago, when I was just trying it out as a still-life subject.  I thought about not posting it, but I really was too tired to do another one after finishing it, so....9 down, 31 to go!

Here's the palette shot: 

Day 8/40 - red ribbon #1 5x7, painted 11-17-10

It was hard to tell if this one was really coming together until I stepped back from it.  I painted this sitting down, and while stepping back is really important in painting, it's much easier to remember to do it if you paint standing up.


Palette shot:

Day 7/40 - rose color study #1 5x7, painted 11-16-10

This one was painted one value shape at a time, with a size 6 filbert, as I tried to construct each petal by the light shapes and shadow shapes.  I started with the bottom left petal and worked out and up.  Sadly, this photo doesn't show some of the more vivid colors as brightly as they turned out.  I'll try to take a better photo later.

I ended up using the leftover paint from Monday's painting, here's the palette shot:

Day 6/40 - two on a vine, 5x7, painted 11-15-10

I painted this one with size 6 and size 8 filberts, which are a good deal larger than the size 1, 2, & 3 I usually use.  I meant to keep things 'loose,' but it turned out about as tightly as I always paint.  Oh well.

Palette shot:

Day 5/40 - white on white #1, 5x7, painted 11-14-10

I'm always amazed at how many colors appear on white objects.  The egg is on a white tissue, but there was still a lot of color in the shadows.  Even though there's very little bright color here, this was still a lot of fun to paint.  I'll do white on white again.

Palette shot:

Day 4/40 - bottle, 5x7, painted 11-13-10

Well, it's not the best glass bottle I've ever painted, in fact, it's pretty bad really.  I think partly due to the fact that my arms were still shaking a bit from a great power yoga session, haha.  Seriously though, I kept 'fixing' things until I got tired of working on it, but it didn't really get any better.  I will re-visit this subject, but probably not tomorrow.

I used about 3 colors and white, here's the palette shot:

Day 3/40 - closeup, 5x7 painted 11-12-10

Rather than paint the whole flower, I thought I'd just start in with one petal near the center, and work my way around.  It came out a bit abstract-looking, and really I'm not sure if I like it, but I was aiming for something different.


Palette shot:

Day 2/40 - colorful crane, 5x7 painted 11-11-10

This one was done late at night (just finished before midnight), and I was thinking I wanted something easy, but colorful, since the sky had been gray all day.  Colorful I got, but not as easy as I thought it would be.  I think I'll do some more cranes in the future though, but after drawing a few- this one looks like it's two different sizes (the wings vs the head/tail)!

And the palette shot:

Day 1/40 - lone lemon, 5x7 painted 11-10-10

I thought I'd start with something simple, and try to break it down to only a few values/color planes, which is a different approach for me.  Not sure if I really succeeded, but I'll try again next time.

Here's a picture of my palette when I finished:   

The 40-day challenge

Wed. 11-10-10

Several months ago, when I started this blog, I made the decision to do a small painting/study each day.  The more you paint, the better you get, and I figured this was a good way to make sure some art got done each day, no matter how busy I was.  To say 'life got in the way' of my meeting this goal is only partially true.  While I have done some painting studies since then, I thought I needed something to help me recommit to this practice.

I've given myself a 40-day challenge:  to do one small painting (start-to-finish) every day for 40 days.  I might not get them posted each day, but I'll paint one each day and date my postings.  So with that said....on to Day 1!