I Did It!

I kept up with my pledge to paint a watercolor pear each day for most of November. I am back to carving out time each day to make art, which is the best takeaway. The next best one is that it got me playing with watercolor.

On those days, I could get out of my own head and do rather than think, I had better results. This, literally, was hard to do. It was a bit of a fraught month with family issues, but it also was a problem inherent to me with this medium. Having to wait for things to dry gives me too much time to start thinking and I would find myself picking up the brush when it would have been better to sit, wait, and let things be for awhile.

Over the course of the last month, I've frequently walked away thinking that less really is more. Most of the time, I found (and continue to find) myself doing more, more, and more. Eventually, I hope to find my way to less. For example, my favorite pear is here. I tried to emulate this one again, but never could. This one just happened in the moment.

Since I haven't posted for awhile, here are several pears from the week of Thanksgiving. I did not have an actual pear. I was working from "memory". From these, I can see a bad habit of making things too symmetrical. This also happens to me when I work from life of a picture. That said in the top one and in some of the other ones farther below, I got better at capturing the top of the pear, so that it was in a different plane than the body.

I was gone over Thanksgiving. Once I got back, I had access to actual pears again. These are from last night. I've been in a bit of a rut. Last night, in the last few minutes of painting, I made a conscious effort to let go and just explore in the bottom one.

This morning, I made another conscious effort to try and stay loose and ended with this one. It's a good ending to a fruitful (tee hee) month.

I like that it suggests pear rather than screams it.

Where does that leave me? Ready to paint something besides pears, although I am going to do 1 - 2 in acrylic paint to see what happens. I am going to start watching this on line class. Having played with watercolor on my own, I think I'm ready for it. I purchased it several years ago and while it is for all abilities, I think I will get more out of it now. Otherwise, I don't know, but I am committed to keeping up the daily habit.