January Acrylic Works in Progress

I miss my 30 day, 30 paintings, $30 each art challenge that I set for myself each January.

This year, I needed to work on a time sensitive project instead, but NOT doing the challenge has made me realize how important it is to me! Who said it has to be in January? There’s 11 more months to do one, although I do have an idea for a Lent project that would be the customary 40 days/ 8 weeks long. In fact, it’s show application season for artists and makers, and I find myself wanting to plan so many projects, but I also know myself better than that.

So, naturally with these priorities, my brain says “PLAY” and doesn’t want to produce. And yet I’m indebted to the play for anything else I do, so I oblige the inner artist child and paint the Au Train waterfall on a cereal box. Canvases still feel too precious to play on, even thought I know better.

Gouache Study on Black Paper

WIP 12” x24”

Acrylic on a deep 1.5” canvas. Sketching this one on black paper to carry the gouache inspired me to make a very dark back ground, although most of it will be lightened by the time I’m done. I’m having fun playing with a few new painting knifes (thank you, Santa) for scratching the paint together as a blending technique, however, I’m curious how that will work over already dried paint.

Finished, with the photo taken outside.

Take a Hike, 18”x24”

Almost there! I like posting pictures of my works in progress; it gives a time to step back and see it as a whole and I could even run it through a filter to check my values— something I have seen many plien air painters do on their phones!

This one is almost done— based on a photo taken at Millennium Park near Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2019. Backlit trees are some of my favorite, yet tricky, things, and I find that shadows are an underappreciated part of beauty in nature, even though they are so very important to the composition of a painting!