Thursday, August 20, 2015

DAY 0 Getting ready to start a new 30 paintings in 30 days challenge

           

   Take My Brush Away!

Painting #1 of '30 Paintings in 30 Days' Challenge


Fall Flames | Pastel | 9x12
                            


It's a daunting task but January's 30 in 30 Challenge was a great way to jump start my goal of completing 100 paintings this year! I'm going to get a jump on the month as I'll be in Oregon at a workshop and then vacationing in Mt Hood National Forest from August 26th until Sept 4th.


This first painting is a studio piece I just completed and delivered to ROOTSTOCK GALLERY in Winters, Ca for the upcoming Harvest Landscape Show.  

I used Art Spectrum Colorfix paper in Raw Sienna-a wonderful warm orange color that peeks through in places and makes the painting even more high colored!  

What I'm most pleased about in this painting is that I took Kim Lordier's advice from a workshop that I took from her in November 2014.  My translation of what she advised, said in my own terms: 

Stop! when you think you're close to being finished with a painting, (say, at the 90-95% point), put your pastels or brush down and walk away for at least 15 minutes-or even overnight.  When you come back to the painting, ask yourself if you really need to do anything else. The impetus behind this is that it is frequent that one has a tendency to overwork a painting in its final stages. Sometimes, by taking a break and a moment to reflect and then to see the painting with new eyes, we realize that nothing more needs to be done and that the slightly understated-ness may actually be a huge benefit to the final result! 


Henceforth, I'm going to call this tip: Take My Brush Away! (cue in music to Take My Breath Away).

In this painting, I was all set to put a lot of individual leaves on the vines. I'm so glad I stopped as I like this far better than how it would've come out.