For about 30 days, mostly in September, I decided to challenge myself to do an oil painting a day. These were very small sketches that I tried to keep loose and with limited pallets. I am not sure I learned anything but I feel like when I give myself a goal or challenge like this I probably grow in ways I don't realize.
It started off good but at times I got too caught up in details and buried in the weeds of trying to make them look presentable for posting on-line rather than just letting them flow.
It is a problem when you post things on line. You tend to want to make them look good.
In this world where we are always trying to build a "following" it becomes desirable to post things as often as possible on various social media platforms. I think I would learn more if I sketched just to sketch knowing that I wasn't going to post them anywhere but then, when I only spend an hour or so a day doing this I tend to think of everything as something that will get posted and so the problem persists.
What I did learn with this exercise is that I really can get a lot done if I have that commitment to work an hour a day. I realized that often I go days without working at all or working far less time per day. I would like to spend more time sketching randomly during the day and my first thing in the morning time, the time I almost always spend every day drawing or painting something, would be the time for working on larger art work, the stuff that might get hung on a wall.
Anyway, the sketches from those few weeks can be seen on my Instagram page or Pinterest or what the heck, they are all tight here:
