Daily Painting once a Week Continues!

Lots of learning! The e would have had a crisper background on a smoother surface and F would have been more what I had in mind on the canvas one. Trying to get the F as I wanted it lost me the original plan of making it look very equal with either F right-side-up.

 

I started out thinking I would be doing quick palette knife paintings and learn a lot about using them, but I keep designing things that need brushes. So I played with a small knife on the F’s when I wasn’t liking them anyway. I’ve considered taping a note to the back of each one with all the things I would change or do differently …

A-B-C-…..

Deliverer, and a relatively simple design. practice with balance, shifting values, fine writing with paintbrush. i'm liking canvas' texture for having more color interet from bits of others showing through. I'm pleased at the daily small painting concept's success in enabling me to use small bits of time and actually finish things (even though they are imperfect, it's easy to tell myself that's OK as I am doing them to learn)

I already forgot I started putting these on the blog…

 Weeks two and three! I’m really happy that I’m actually doing one per week -- and I’m almost done with a couple more, so if life gets too busy I have some leeway without losing my goal. I think after spending nine months last year on a very complicated and large piece (that didn’t make it into the intended show), this is really helping me enjoy learning more about painting. 

Beloved Son

And week three, Creator.

There are plenty of things I would do differently or even fuss with fixing, except the idea of daily painting (even if I'm doing weekly) is to do them quickly and not stress or fuss but move on and learn. I can always paint over them some day if I feel like it or go back and touch-up when I want to. Some of them looked better halfway through than "done", part of the education ....

Meanwhile it fits really well with our current schedule - I can do pencil work for designs during slow times in the office. I even used the x-acto that happened to be in my desk drawer when we got our office spots to cut a stencil for Creator (using letters I designed based on Julie Wildmans' "The Inside Curve" class I did during covid lock-down, thanks Julie!). I can use short bits of time easily to tone the little canvas board or paint a bit, etc. I even have kept bits of palette paper in an air-tight watercolor palette I got so I can more easily use a bit of mixed paint another day.

Meanwhile I can consider what we were told recently in a devotional - that taking the upon us the name of Christ means (among other things) taking on or developing His characteristics. So Creator fits right into this project :)

One downside is that I assumed I would work with palette knives mostly - to be quick and to learn more about using them, but I keep planning things that need to be done with brushes and I only have some cheap ones. 

If anyone happens to know something I could use for Q, X or Z, feel free to let me know....

Daily Painting Weekly

 

I’ll try to make a really long story as short as I can. Some of you may know we were are doing mission service again, this time in Salt Lake CIty at church headquarters where we work with the Mission Department 8-5. 

I have a harder time with life when I’m not involved in something creative and evenings don’t work well for me to do this, so I brought the sketchbook I took to Brasil and pencils to work on graphite lettering, to design things and possibly practice brush pen lettering when it’s slow at work. I did do a bit of this and I started on an idea for designing  pages for a possible accordion book of names of Christ.

An unexpected offer of a set of water-soluble oils came my way  (my medium of choice for painting) from an artist in SLC who hadn't used them for the project she bought them for, so I had an option I hadn't planned on.  But I couldn't quite figure out to use them in a way that worked for my schedule, space, lack of other materials/equipment.

A second bit of serendipity came when we were able to get another desk, so now I have the plastic table we bought for art and the desk for study and I can leave everything ready to go and not spend my bits of time just moving things about and prepping. So I got the book "Daily Painting" and a supply order from Dick Blick. I figure there's no way to do daily but possibly weekly.

The next hurdle was that I’m not great at drawing so just designing/sketching something to paint could take up my limited time and energy — until I realized (in the middle of the night) that since I’ve been mulling for years over ways to combine my lettering skills with oil painting, I could do letters as the subject(s), which I have been drawing and studying for years. 

Just days later when our Sunday School teacher invited us to create a personal token to remind of us of our covenants and how they bind us to Christ - I suddenly realized I could put it all together! and do little, fairly quick paintings of letters representing name of Christ and viola, it all came together and I already have one "done" (might need fixing) and two more over half done and two mostly designed! This one is A for the Great I Am and also Alpha and Omega. Only 6” square and still wet. 

I often tend to study/ponder scriptures and quotes through my calligraphy so this works for me in many ways and we'll see how  well I can keep up. I might actually start using Instagram and see if I can post a little painting every week. Maybe since I have a bit of head start I can keep it going. Obviously there are plenty of flaws in this first one, but the idea is to do fairly fast and small ones that help you learn techniques and get practice without stress of investing a lot into it, so if its not good you can scrape it off and paint over it or even toss it, so I may or may not work on it more. Maybe some evenings when I want to dabble a few minutes I will see if I can improve it but then again, I might make it worse :) that's part of the learning too.

Update, as part of reporting on our Sunday school challenge the teacher showed photos and left mine up on the big screen for a while during the next part of her lesson.  Seeing it greatly enlarged convinced me to to do some clean-up :)