Only days until the September thirty paintings in thirty days challenge begins.
Despite the fact that I will be traveling (mostly driving and visiting friends) for nine days in September, I thought I could pull off the feat of painting thirty WATERCOLOR paintings. I picked a subject, and I started to prepare. I've spent the last week finding my reference photos, sketching, tweaking compositions, identifying butterflies, and compiling information for blog posts.
What have I discovered in preparation?
First off, although I have hundreds of butterfly photos, I have lots of photos of the same butterflies over and over. I could come up with thirty separate species, but barely.
Secondly, I quickly realized that you cannot scale a butterfly down to fit in a 4" X 6" mat and have hopes of much compositional interest or opportunity to show much detail without losing the beauty of using watercolor (my opinion as related to how I paint).
And, lastly, I haven't done a commission that I need to do or gotten the 6 or so paintings "ahead" that I had planned to do this week. I've been distracted by turtle nesting season, my daughter's first birthday away from home, subbing at the wildlife center, and preparing for the storm on its way.
So, what am I trying to say?
I'm hoping this decision will result in the two intended consequences of the challenge: paint more and have fun! Come along for the ride! Beginning 1Sept, you can see my paintings and hundreds/thousands of others here.
- I will not be doing 30 individual paintings in September.
- I do plan to participate via blog, Facebook and Instagram.
- I do plan to post every day. Here's what I see that looking like: 1)sketch on watercolor paper along with reference photo 2)abstract washes 3)image taking shape 4)finished painting 5)post with a collage of the four previous days and detail about the butterfly
- Result = 6 medium sized butterfly paintings (probably 12" X 16" and up)
As my children are fond of saying, "You be you!"
*Note: Collage at top is not representative of the photos that I will be painting from. You will see some of these, but not necessarily all. All photos here were taken by me ©2016 Nancy Murphree Davis.
