Diving back into my favorite medium and challenging myself to come up with and to stick to a new system of painting!

I’ve decided to plan out a brand new 25-painting series called “Home Sweet Home.” All I am focusing on is painting every day–this first week, I’ll be painting at least 2.5 hours a day, and as the weeks progress, I’ll allot more time to sitting at the desk. These first few weeks I am concentrating on just sitting down to paint. I’ve already completed two paintings and am almost finished with the third.

This first one is called “October World.” With this piece I was pretty lax and casual. Loose sketch looking at a photograph and basically learning how to paint works again. I’m learning as I move from one piece to another that the middle crap stage of the painting is the part where I’m most likely to shoot myself in the foot–I either doubt my artistic choices and end up taking forever to move on or I straight up quit. With these first two pieces, I’ve realized to just keep slogging forward, even if I think I made the wrong move or I don’t like the outcome of a particular layer.

This next one is “Luna Bird.” I like how this one turned out, for the most part. But I do think the bird at the top of the tree doesn’t quite work. I’m still happy with the finished painting and I’d really like to revisit the way I did the tree leaves on the big willow–it was pretty fun, and this one, on the whole was pretty effortless.

This third one will feature a family of trolls making their way through the woods. I’m thinking of titling it “Silent Migration.” This one was inspired by my kids, who always let their imaginations run away with them at night, and every little sound sparks the question “what was that sound outside?”

I’m also experimenting with working on multiple paintings at a time. We’ll see how that goes…