Day 12 of 30. Tea and Lemons

Tea and Lemons.  Watercolor with a smidge of crayon.
Approximately 9.5 x 8.5 inches.

Almost half way through the 30 paintings in 30 days challenge, and I'm 12 for 12.  Whoop, whoop! I'm proud of myself. You'll notice that I don't blog in detail about most of them.  You can see the entire set so far on instagram.

The one drawback to instagram is my phone's camera, which is not fantastic.  In low light or miserably cloudy days, the colors on instagram are off despite my best efforts at correcting them through limited brightness adjustments.

Anyhow, like the colors and messiness of this.  Quin pink, hansa yellow medium, and manganese blue hue on Kilamanjaro 300 lb cold press paper.  There's a touch of crayon for line in the mug and along the edge of the cutting board.

I have not been doing a ton of still lifes--out of 12, this is my second.  Bonus, I sold my apples. (Another whoop!)

Enjoy the day!

Day 2 of 30: Three Apples

Three Apples.  Watercolor.
Approximately 7 x 10 inches.

For the third January running, I'm participating in 30 paintings in 30 days.  It's hosted by Leslie Saeta, and you can check out the artist participating here.  I highly recommend it if you need some kind of push to get going.  It's an excellent exercise.

The painting above is from Day 2, and is the 5th painting I've done using the palette of quin gold, phthalo blue rs, and quin red.  You can see an example of one on my blog here.  Others are on Instagram.

This is also the 2nd still life I've done of late.  I usually paint without any reference, but every once in a while I need to loop back through a reality based painting framework to revisit shapes and composition.  I'm not sure it helps, but I struggle with getting almost too loose otherwise.

Here's to a great start of a New Year, cheers!

Three Trees and the end of 2016

Three Trees.  Watercolor.
About 5.5 x 8 inches.

This is my 43rd blog post of 2016 and, I believe, my 184 post all together since October 2012.  I aim for about a post a week, but some months there are more and some months there are less.  This month and the last, I've only manage about one post a month.  If you're interested, you can go back and check out my first post ever, which was a plein air painting of sycamore trees.    I'm maybe a better painter now....maybe.  I do happen to like today's painting better.....

I'm going to do the painting a day in January 2017, just because it's so much fun.  I don't know what I'll paint yet, or maybe I'll go in with no particular plan at all just to see what happens.

Here's to 2017.

Phthalo Blue RS, Quin Gold, and Quin Red on Kilamanjaro 300 lb cold press paper.