I just completed my second week of my 1 hour painting challenge. I feel like things went a bit better this week. I’m starting to get a little more comfortable with just jumping in and paintings something. I also feel like I’m less concerned about the outcome. So progress is being made slowly but surely.
However, I’m still not great at time management. I bought this cute little visual timer for myself to help me with this project. And it is great, but it doesn’t make any noise until your time is up so I often forget it is there. To help myself out I break my paintings down into 30 minute segments. I feel like the first 30 minutes go by so fast and occasionally I haven’t really gotten much done. So, next week I’m going to try and pay more attention to my timer and try and get at least half of the painting done within the first 30 minutes. (Because that is not the case right now. My second 30 minute block is when the majority of the work is done.) I think it make a huge difference.
Anyway, here are the paintings I did this week and my thoughts about them.
1 hour painting #4- Favorite fishing lure 8”x8”
After painting the cicada and really enjoying working on a small single item still life (to me they are portraits, but I think technically it’s a still life), I decided I would do it again. If you have read some of my older post you will know that our family inherited a collection of antique fishing lures. I find them really interesting and tried to create a series out of them, but it just didn’t work out. Well, they are back and I am feeling more positive about them now. Who knows maybe that series will actually come to life during this challenge.
I really love this painting. Not only did I really enjoy working on it, but I love how it turned out. I also love the concept of taking something small and making it big. I think the cropping on this also helped with it appearing even larger. So I might continue to play around with this idea in future paintings.
1 hour painting #5- Fishing lure #2 8”x8”
Of course, after the previous painting, I wanted to paint another lure. This one however, I don’t like as much. It’s not bad, but there are a few things I could have done to make it more enjoyable and a more successful painting in my eyes. First off, I have a package of very bright, very vibrant cardstock. I thought this beautiful magenta color would be great for this green lure, and it was, but, I hard a hard time getting the color anywhere close to what it actually looks like. I’m fine with the color it is, but I wish I hadn’t spent so much time trying to get it perfect. Second, the composition. I wish I had cropped it a bit more to give it more of a presence and appear more like a portrait than a still life. And Lastly, I just wish I had been looser while painting this. I felt like I was trying to get everything perfect, which felt like I had to wrestling it out of me instead of letting it flow. But, it’s not bad and next time I will use what I learned from this one.
1 hour painting #6- Pelicans 8”x8”
This painting was fun, but because it’s something I would typically paint, I fell into familiar habits. The one most common habit, taking my sweet time so I can make sure everything is correct. Ugh, what an annoying thing to do. It is a hard habit to break, but I’m working on it. When my first timer went off and I only had about a quarter of the background done, it was a good kick in the pants. I’m not going to lie I gave myself an extra 20-30 minutes on this one.
1 hour painting #7- Oranges 8”x8”
This has been a painting I have wanted to try for a while. I have been following one of my favorite painters, Erika Lee Sears for a few years now. She has the most beautiful citrus still lifes (her other paintings are also amazing). She has a lot of citrus paintings and every time I see one, it makes me want to give it a try. So I did.
I don’t think it was a bad first attempt, but I definitely think I could benefit from taking a little extra time on my setup and overall composition. I just threw some orange slices down and got to work. I feel like if I had cropped this in a little closer it would have been a more interesting painting.
Overall, I think it was a good week. Clearly I have a lot of things that I want to focus on improving. So we will see where next week takes me.