Oh, man. The final 5 paintings are done. This challenge is finished and I’m spent. I don’t know how people paint every single day all the time. It’s a lot harder than it looks, but I imagine it gets easier with time. The first day I didn’t paint I wandered around my house not sure what to do with my hands. I eventually started cleaning, but I had painting on the brain.
I sincerely, with all my heart, thought the first painting in this challenge would be the absolute hardest to paint. But there I was at the end, struggling with paintings. Ellipses are apparently the bane of my existence. I never really mastered them way back when I used to draw all the time, and it came back to bite me in the ass in the camera painting. It was by far the most frustrating and difficult painting of this entire challenge. My husband actually sat down at my easel and started painting them for me at my lowest point. This was really something since he hasn’t ever actually painted on one of my paintings before. He usually just gives me critics. He did a good job with the ellipses and the little time out really helped me take a breath and get it finished.
My frustration carried over to the next day and I couldn’t for the life of me get a painting finished. The stress of getting a painting finished each day was definitely getting to me. It was getting later and later in the day and I hated everything I was painting. I wiped my canvas a final time and called it a night. The next day I was able to finish two paintings that both turned out nicely. The second one was even my best painting of the challenge. It just goes to show, a little (or a lot) frustration paves the way to better art.
Number 29 is actually a commission for my mother-in-law. She saw the other glass fishing floats I had painted and asked if I could paint her’s. Of course I said yes. For one, I needed another subject, and two, I love commissions. I think it is the best one of the bunch too. I’m a little sad I can’t keep it for myself.
Finally, my last painting is a repainting of the first glass fishing float I painted. I thought I could have painted it better so I gave it a shot. I think it did turn out better than the first one, but it isn’t as good as #29. That one I knocked out of the park.
Wow! You stuck with it despite the struggles. Especially love your glass fishing float paintings too.
I am thinking of doing a 30 in 30 but maybe in March or April. One lesson from you is to have my subjects lined up ahead of time! Thanks for posting on your experience!
Thank you! Good luck with your own 30 in 30 challenge. I would suggest lining up way more subjects than you think you’ll need. For every subject I did paint, 2-3 others didn’t work out for various reasons. So I blew through all of the things I had lined up to paint before I was half way through the challenge. It took me half a day to put away everything I had gathered up to paint.
Thanks! Very good point!
Job well done Amber! You inspire me! I hope to accomplish a 30 in 30 myself at some point…watching another artist do it, she completed 100 pastels in 100 days, and her choice was to paint the same exact painting every time, each time differently. Various colors, tone, cropping, etc. It might be a good option for anyone who might get stuck trying to “find” subject matter. That step can totally derail my efforts, for sure!
Thank you! I definitely suggest trying it. I feel like I’ve really improved a lot since the first painting. Thank you for the tip! I really like the idea of painting the same thing differently. I image it would be just as big of a challenge to make each one different though.
Well done for sticking with it and seeing it through – I really empathise with you on the ellipses; they can be the bane of any drawing exercise! And hey, you got a commission out of it – so it was absolutely all worth it!
Thank you. I would really like to avoid ellipses, but I really probably should practice if they’re giving me this much trouble.
Hi Amber, thank you for visiting and liking my art blog. Love your work.. Please visit again and leave me a hello!
Thank you. I’ll check it out.