Day 5!
Day 6:
One of the things I love about painting daily is that it brings my focus -body and mind- into my studio. This is a state that's somehow much harder to reach when I'm not practicing daily painting. I think it has to do with pushing yourself. Doing a daily painting isn't particularly easy for me at this point in my education. I have to keep it top of mind in order to get it done at all. It means my mind is filled with art instead of my part time job or life upkeep. And the result is just a lot more creation in this case of owls but also of non-owl subjects to. I'm just doing more work overall. Which feels really really great.
Day 7!
Day 8!
This guy is a bit more abstracted, which is fun. However, I'm not totally sure someone could look at him and say, "It's an owl!"
Day 9!
Oh boy. Learned a lot on this one. Need to take a better picture tomorrow with the sun and collect my notes.
Update: Here's the What-I-Learned post!
Day 10:
I think eventually this guy will get a bit of line to distinguish him from the background. Looking at him makes my eyes hurt so I'll put him away for a few days and then pull him out again to try and calm him down. I'm clearly not against business but something about this one in particular goes over that arbitrary line.
However, it was fun to work in my more traditional way after yesterday's process change up.
Day 11:
After yesterday's business, I clearly went way more streamlined for this guy.
He also helped me realize that I need to be more aware of what color family I'm working in. This guy has different colors but they are all greyed out hues. The color on the background is greyed out and muted as well (plus a complement of the main body.)
Yesterday's owl worked really well with the green leaves and pink/red flowers because he remained in the blue color family even though the blues were all over the place. (Although I think I got into trouble with values.)
When the challenge is over, one of the things I'd like to do is pick my 5 favorite owls and my 5 least favorite owls and try and figure out why. One of the things I'll do is desaturate the images and look at the values. Value is the secret ingredient every time and I'm guessing that the ones I like best use value in a more effective way.
Sep 11, 2016, 8:15pm