Short Time, Practice Time

The last two nights I noticed that my patience was running a little thin. The desire to paint was there, but the desire to spend 4-6 hours completing a finished painting was not. I wanted to wrap up my work day, drink a glass of wine and play scrabble with my husband! So, I decided to narrow my focus to two areas that have been causing me trouble:

January 21, 2016 5.5"x8.5" on Watercolor Paper

Palette: Black & White

1. Values. I may have mentioned this in an earlier post, but I have always loved paying close attention to subtle value shifts. Translating that from my drawings and oil paintings into gouache has been the most (second most?) difficult thing about the medium. I've found I have far greater success in the application and mixing of color than in shifting values with one color. To practice with this, I decided to do a rendering of an egg. I will definitely need more practice to get things up to par, but this black and white study was a way to start working on the problem without eating my time.

January 22, 2016 6"x8" on Watercolor Paper

Palette: Black & White

2. Speed & Brush Size. Over the last week of painting, I've noticed that I've introduced some of the difficulties I have in oil painting to my gouache studies. In particular, my tendency to waste time by using very small brushes. Since I wanted to wrap up quickly, I decided to limit myself to primarily using one size brush for the study and to complete it within the hour. 

I think in the future when I am wanting to limit my time for the day painting I will return to these two types of studies. It will be good to break up the time I usually spend on setting up a still life and selecting a palette, getting right to the bone of what I need to work on.

Today I feel my enthusiasm is refreshed! Also, a new package filled with Claybord and Aquabord panels has just arrived, so I am off to play paint!