Day 1 - Random Pathways

Random Pathways, Acrylic on WC Paper, 5"x7", $50

February 2018 Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days Challenge - Day 1

Another year, another 30 Day Challenge. This one is starting a month later than usual because the person that does all the hard work was traveling during the month of January. This is my tenth time participating in the challenge which occurs twice a year (usually in January and September.)

For this challenge, I decided to focus on a combination of abstraction and portraiture. That seems like a crazy combo but it makes sense for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that my life has been a little more interesting than I prefer lately and I find myself short on time and focus some days. Doing a small abstract on those days is a fun way to cut myself a bit of slack without giving up the challenge. Another reason is that I want to combine abstraction with portraiture to create interesting, thought-provoking works so doing them together and separately furthers my goals. Finally, I have signed up for a portraiture workshop led by Jean Pederson at the Kanuga Watermedia Workshops in North Carolina in April. I want to go in ready to absorb as much as possible and figured that refreshing my skills before I go might help me get more out of the workshop.

Some of the paintings will be for sale and some will not be. I frequently hold paintings back if they do not meet my standards for sale (I still post both winners and losers during the challenge - to me that is part of what the exercise is about), that are personal (portraits of my family for example), or when I am not sure what I want to do with them or where I am going with them (paintings that fit in some interim place that I might want to revisit.) Paintings that are for sale will appear in Daily Paintworks - the icon sits on the right side of the blog page.  

Today's painting is a small abstract painted with heavy-body acrylics on gessoed watercolor paper. I used my currently favorite palette - Phthalo Blue Red Shade, Alizarin Crimson, Indian Yellow Hue, Titanium White and Carbon Black.