Sunday, September 10, 2006

painting-every-other-day

There's a group of bloggers with links on the watercolor website http://handprint.com who do a painting-a-day ... a great practice, if you can pull it off. The paintings are mostly small, of homely subjects. Little everyday vignettes. I'd love to emulate them for the practice of finding a subject everyday--of course they're all around, everything is a subject, but you have to see it, not overlook it! (I used to always be so stumped for subjects; hard to believe now.) Also painting everyday can't help but contribute to facility with medium--even after years of watercolor painting such facility escapes me: too much water, not enough water; too much mixing, not enough mixing (more and more it seems the key may be just leaving it alone! the less I interfere, the better the result is likely to be). And also contribute to building a base--ideas about subjects and colors and color mixes--that would help in any painting.

This is my first "painting-a-day"-type painting. It's about 4 x 4". The subject, I think, is spot on: simple, modest ... but with drama. Sadly, my drawing of the chair is off ... rushing through the drawing to get to the painting: always turns out to be a mistake! Adirondack chairs are hard to draw! I like the subject so much, I think I'll try again ... (Did a small painting of an adirondack chair on a dock in Florida on our last vacation in the Keys; it's currently hanging at mom and dad's but I'll try to post it here for somparison ...)

Didn't so a painting today, so I'll make an extra effort tomorrow. If I can't do a painting-a-day, perhaps I can shoot for a painting-every-other
-day! Posted by Picasa

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