This is Part 2 of “Conquering My Fear of the #100daysproject.” Today is the 29th day of my project. In this post I share the highs, the lows and what I have learned - so far - about making art every day.
I think I got off to a pretty good start. I started out painting loose landscapes which were very fun and exciting to do. My approach was to: 1. use a flat brush 2. have a very general idea about what I wanted to depict, and 3. allow the paint to do what it wanted.
I chose to paint in monochrome to start because this meant that the only decisions I needed to make were the ratio of foreground, middle ground, and background, and where to place the highest value contrast. This worked very well for 6 days and then my brain was ready to try something a little challenging.
Still keeping to the landscape theme, I decided to increase the range of hues. I also decided to play with adding texture by scratching into the paint. Pictured above: the first three down the left-hand column are the pieces that I am happiest with. The remaining five gave me some frustration. At this point I noticed that a little fear crept in. I started to feel afraid that everything up to this point was purely accidental. The bottom two pieces, to me, show me trying too hard.
Rather than force myself to continue on this path, I decided to take a break from landscapes and try some floral painting. My theme is Show Up and Share, after all. This means that as long as I show up to make art and share that art everyday, I can consider myself on track for my project.
The next subjects I chose to paint were crocuses and daffodils. These were also good practice at trying something completely new and unknown to me, giving it a go, and, regardless of the outcome, sharing my work. Directly below are just the three crocus pieces I felt most happy with.
Above is an example of how I learned to paint daffodils. When I paint flowers, I prefer a loose, almost abstract effect so I don’t usually do a sketch to start. I like to paint directly, using the brush and the paint to do most of the work.
During this project, I also did not limit myself to painting. On days 13 and 22 I decided that sharing some of my drawing practice routines: blind contour and continuous line drawing, would be my Show Up and Share
Blind contour drawing and continuous line drawing are my go to routines to develop my observational and, therefore, drawing skills. They are my favorites because they free me of any rigid expectations about making the drawing look “good” or in proper proportions. I’m simply training my hand and eyes to work together.
On day 18 I decided to show up by donating to an organization supporting refugees of the war on Ukraine and paint this piece that you see below.
On days 19 and 20 I happily painted rocks and shells.
On day 21, starting with fragments of shells that I collected on my walk on the beach that day, I decided to push myself into more abstract work letting the lines and shapes that I observed in the rocks and shells be translated into my drawing.
At this point I was feeling very happy and in a groove. But when I woke up on the morning of the 23rd day I felt terrible. I had insomnia the previous night and was in a brain fog when I stepped up to my work table. I had been enjoying the streak of clarity about what I wanted to paint until this morning. This morning, I did NOT want to paint anything. Still, I decided to try. I had a set of powdered watercolor that I bought nearly a year ago but I hadn’t tried yet. This, I decided, was going to be the day to do it! And I was glad that I did because I was energized by the results.
I had no plan except to experiment with the powders.
The unexpected variation and intensity of the colors were very enjoyable. I have been painting with them ever since.
As with my earlier play with loose landscapes, I experienced the same cycle of starting out freely experimenting, then growing fearful and stiff and over thinking, and back to more looseness.
Studying the piece above, I see that my problem was that I placed the dark blue rosette practically in the center (this is generally a compositional no-no) and the yellow flowers (of almost identical size to each other and the central flower) forming an equilateral triangle around the blue rosette further anchored my eyes to that spot.
Now that I had realized what was going wrong, I could correct (or avoid) this. I told myself to remember to change both shape and color at the outset. Then, I varied sizes and textures. The result was a much more pleasing (to me) composition.
Below is the painting that I made this morning using the same awareness and principles. With this painting, I also learned to deal with accidents. In the bottom right, I accidentally drip yellow Posca pen paint. So I decided to incorporate this and make the yellow berry branch motif!
As I write this sentence, I am still excited by this series so I think I will continue along this path for a while.
If you know someone whom you think might enjoy reading this, please feel free to share it.
Thank you for spending the time to be on this journey with me about my 100 Days Project. I still have 3/4 of the way to go and I will revisit my project and post about it when I am closer to the end. I hope that I will publish again in two weeks and in my next post I want to explore the myth that there is such a thing as being “too old” to start a career as an artist.
If something in this post spoke to you or resonated with you, I hope you will share about it in the comments. I love reading them.
Warmly,
Alma
I really like how your 100 day project is taking shape as sets of similar works at this point. Everything is lovely, but I really like those first monochrome landscapes! I think knowing when to move on to something different will really help you work your way through the 100 days. Nice work!