The month of January flew by.  It's hard to believe I painted each day, with 30 paintings posted and shared as part of Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" challenge.  I took the challenge literally, starting a new painting using the time I had available each day.  Some I am proud of and happy with, others not so much.  I was tempted to go back and fix or continue working with some, and a few I wanted to delete from the blog, but felt that was counterproductive to the challenge to simply paint.  It was important for me to paint without getting bogged down in a single painting, to loosen up and try new things, and for each day to have a fresh painting.  This was an exercise I thoroughly enjoyed and was very helpful to me.

Many thanks to Meredith Adler for introducing me to the challenge and encouraging me to participate, for explaining why I needed a blog and helping me get one set up.  That was a challenge in itself!

Going forward, I plan to spend more time with my paintings, using what I've practiced but without time constraints.  Learning to paint landscapes and farm animals remains a goal, and I have much to learn.  I love watercolors and look forward to learning new techniques and continued practice with them.  I will post from time to time, as I get paintings completed.  As always,  I am grateful for all the views and comments from friends!


   

Painting #30, Time's Up....Not what I was hoping for, but the best I could do in an hour. This is young Shadow, the chicken.

Painting #29, the elusive landscape

Painting #28, distant trees

Painting #27, flowers

Painting #26, trees

Painting #25, practicing negative painting

Painting #24, more grapes. Very, very challenging....

Painting #23, first attempt at grapes. What a challenge....

Painting #22, Just for fun

Painting #21, Raskal

Painting #20, trees and roots on a bank.

Painting #19, abstract landscape

Painting #18, practicing another landscape

Painting #17, mountain view

Painting #16, Pinky, the chicken. This is a quick 30 minute freehand painting. The body shape is really off, but it captures her look pretty well.

Painting #15, mountain landscape. Trying to improve my color and not overwork the paint. The photo color is not true to the original, it looks flatter and muddy on the computer.

Painting #14, landscape with barn. I am finding landscapes to be incredibly difficult. I am very unhappy with this painting and view it as a lesson to learn more about color, depth, painting nature, etc.

Painting #13, mountain scene

Painting #12, water scene

Painting #11, Two Chicks

Painting #10, Hummingbird

Painting #9, Sunflowers

Painting #3, Watercolor of Max Patch summit. 1/3/16

Painting #8. Mountain view.

Painting #7, sweet goat "Cherry"

Painting #6. "Saddle", the goat.

Painting #5. Colorful chicken

Painting #4, black dog

Painting #2. Watercolor, flower.

Painting #1 for 2016, Friday January 1. This is a watercolor of Sunflower, my beautiful gold splash orpington chicken.

Welcome to my art blog. I will begin a "30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge" on January 1, 2016 and will share my progress on this page. I hope to have fun with this and I thank you for viewing!