A Look Back

Painting #236 filled up the last page of my favorite spiral notebooks for painting. When I first started, I quickly found Bee Paper Super Deluxe Sketch Books and early on I purchased 2 in the 6" x 6" size and 2 in the 9" x 9" size. Since then, I've added 2 of the 9" x 12" size. I work in all of the books at the same time. With multiple books, it's easier to prep a lot of sheets with gesso at one time, I can prep 2 pages per book, or 3 if I am really careful, without making a total mess of it all.

Fairly early, I decided that the smaller size book did not work for 6" x 6" paintings. With the spiral binding, the paper can shift a bit, so it doesn't work to paint edge to edge. I still have blank sheets in these smaller books, which are currently used to practice color mixing, painting whiskers and so on.

Since I work in multiple books at the same time and also paint on hardboard, each book lasts a long time. In fact, I finally finished one of the 9" x 9" books and I thought it would be fun to look back and see what I did and what I learned. I worked in this book from January 2016 to June 2018.

Here is the first page. Hurrah! It's a negative space tree.

Painted in 01/16

I worked on timed paintings.

Painted in 03/16

Painted in 05/18

I painted a lot of apples.

Painted in 05/16

I got frustrated and didn't always finishing a painting, even when I should have (referring to finishing the painting).

Painted in 2016_07

I played around with mixing color.

Painted in 04/17

Painted in 02/18

I had my first epiphany that the direction of paint strokes matters. These were painted one day apart. 

Painted in 10/16

Painted in 10/16

I completed a number of cat paintings.

Painted in 08/17

Painted in 09/17

I tried to tackle some tough homework assignments. The assignment involved sinks. I tried to make it "easier" by adding a cat. 

Painted in 10/17

I had a major epiphany regarding values and shapes.

Painted in 11/17

Even though I am a color fanatic, I learned that I like painting white things.

Painted in 12/17

This post covers about 25% of the pages in this book. Last, but not least, here is the last page of the book which I posted on Monday.

Painted in 06/18