I just love that swoosh of color. New shape of a shadow. Come and gone in a few moments time. Want to paint that.
I know I wasn’t the only one worried. Leslie Saeta posted today, time to sign up for the September 30 Paintings in 30 days challenge. In TWO DAYS!!?? I lost a week somewhere. Thought I still had a week to prep and paint a little. Are you ready for the challenge?
I have two themes in mind. But I may just go with the flow. I have decided to go small for the most part. My September calendar is full, only one week is clear of distractions.
New And Improved
I am so excited! I will be putting my new palette to use! Just finished setting it up. After researching palettes, paint colors, paint makers, and of course, how to set up a palette.
I decided on a Mijello 18-well palette. Hard decision, so many options available. I thought surely this would be big enough. HA! I like the abundant space for mixing. It takes up a lot of room on my desk. But I won’t need the multiple small porcelain palettes I used in addition to my Cotman sketchers box.
I followed the examples of others, and washed the palette first. I made sure not to scratch it. I left space in each well to work, not filling them completely. And I made the cheat sheet.
It is not a perfect, or balanced, color wheel palette. There are some new colors that I might end up not liking, or using much. Time will tell. And already, I know of at least five colors I would like to add. A good grey being one of them.
I am clearly heavy on the light side. Not enough mid to dark values. I do have a basic red, blue and yellow, so the mixing options are wide open. Looking forward to the learning ahead.
I found a great box at Michaels for storing my paint tubes. Meant for storing photos, you can find them in the scrapbook section. I bought two each of the large and small. They snap closed securely. Much better than the Ziploc I used at one time.
Pete is home!
Finished Proton Therapy on the 15th. There will be follow ups of course. They said it would be nine months before he feels 100%. He IS starting to sleep longer at night. That is a major relief for all of us! He is doing physical therapy and weight training to regain strength. And playing word games to strengthen different areas of the brain. Very happy to be home, and in his own bed!
So grateful for your well wishes and prayers!
Prayer is POWERFUL!
So blessed with your kindness and good thoughts!
Thank you!
The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26
We give thanks to God always for all of you,
constantly mentioning you in our prayers.
1 Thessalonians 1:2
Couldn’t have done it without you! Thank you for your encouragement and support! I am grateful for your suggestions and critiques. Your friendship is a blessing!
I went through the paintings, and found my favorites for each month. A full third of the total made the list. I condensed that list even more, for my top favorites.
I am also sharing the paintings that had the most views. Not a complete list, and I am not sure it is a true representation of viewer favorites. The majority of my Mingus posts, included more than one painting. That makes a true count difficult. I would love to hear your favorites, if there are any that stand out to you. Sea Dean has posted her six favorites on her 100 Days Of Mingus Pinterest board.
I have procrastinated, putting off writing this post. I keep starting projects that have waited while I was painting Mingus. I am not sure what to write, or, if I have anything interesting to say about the project.
Dave asked if I have noticed any changes in my practice as a result of painting daily. My reply was that I am less precious about each piece. I told him that I would talk about it more in this post. But I really don’t have much more to say. This project was a success in that I finished. I kept up. Didn’t give up. But my habit of setting high standards for myself, has me… feeling like I missed the mark. I was looking forward to more experimentation. Creating pieces with more depth and complexity.
I feel like I should have more to say. Maybe it is my “style”. Maybe there is “a style”. But I feel like I just did the same thing over and over (laughing). I wasn’t able to work in different mediums or try as many new techniques as I would have liked. And this is just me, grading myself. My progress. I know it was due to circumstances out of my control. So I am cutting myself some slack. And I did enjoy the process. I am still painting daily.
When I looked at the paintings again, there were a few that jumped out at me as incomplete. Less than half of the 100. And I know I mentioned that a few times as I went along. I am planning on adding to some of them. But that will have to wait until next month.
Some of you have also asked if they are for sale. If you are interested, you can let me know in a comment or through a private message on Facebook. The large, 5.5 x 11.5, are $120. Smaller pieces start at $17 for ATC’s and range from $38 for 3.5 x 5.5 to $70 for 5 x 7. For U.S. buyers, shipping is free until the end of July.
There was only one painting that I walked away from. Only one lying around. If I mentioned in a post about trashing a ruined painting, you can catch me in a fib. This is from the first week. I honestly can’t remember what I was thinking. Go for it, have a good laugh! Ha ha ha! The sky is watercolor, and I like how it turned out. The hills are acrylic, and there is pen as well. I used a rubber comb while the red paint was wet. I was going to layer more on this. Add texture.
The sky is Windsor Newton, not Inktense. So I would have to seal it to continue. Inktense is permanent once dry. (I don’t have a good sky blue in Inktense.) The sky is what stopped me in my tracks. I won’t take this any further, like I said, the original idea is gone.
I still need to flatten the paintings. I will share that process with you soon.