Barn #1

Barn #1, Acrylic on Crescent Board, 10"x12", $100

Happy New Year all!  I hope you have a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2015.  

 Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days Challenge
 Today begins a new Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days Challenge.  What a great way to jump start the new year. For those of you unfamiliar with the Thirty Day Challenge, the idea is to create and post a new painting each day for 30 days.  The idea was started by Leslie Saeta who graciously hosts the Challenge on her blog, Slices of Life. This is my fourth Thirty Day Challenge - the first one was a dismal failure, but the last two in January and September 2014 were excellent.  To see the paintings from the last two challenges click here (January 2014) and here (September 2014).

Choosing a Theme

To make the challenge more manageable and more useful, I try to have a theme. Last January my theme was simply learning to paint with palette knives.  In September, my theme was sunflowers.  This time, my theme is barns.  My plan is to continue my exploration of the intersection between realism and abstraction and the use of lines in my work.  To that end, I plan to incorporate elements of abstraction and line-work in each of my paintings. And, although this painting is rectangular, I am planning to make most of the rest of them square.  Making them all the same aspect ratio helps with composition and space allocation and provides an element of unity to the series, as do the other common elements. The interesting part will be watching the evolution over the course of the month.

Today's Painting
As happens frequently when I start a new subject, the first painting is a bit tentative.  I used a type of hatch mark application of the paint to get a mixed but not mixed appearance to the various areas of the painting. I used abstract swooshes of paint to get the feel of weeds and grasses in the foreground and used lines to give definition to individual weeds and certain architectural elements. I found that the size of the barn made it kind of difficult to make many interesting paint marks - I learned today that a bigger image/space gives me more room to make the paint look interesting.

This painting is painted on Crescent Board which has an archival core with watercolor paper adhered to the surface.  I applied gesso to the watercolor paper before beginning my painting. It can be framed without glass. 

About the Paintings
Most of the paintings that I create during the challenge will be for sale.  Some, for obvious reasons (you'll know them when you see them) won't be.  All purchases are handled on my web site (www.annavreman.com). I will have a special page set up for this Thirty Day Challenge. Pricing will be at a sneak preview level for the duration of the challenge after which they will be priced at normal gallery levels. Also, in general, paintings purchased through my web site are unframed - this facilitates shipping and also allows you the latitude to choose what looks right in your home. I do frame some work upon request, but I only make a limited selection of frames for cost and time reasons.