While catching up on some of the older Artists Helping Artists podcasts, I was intrigued by a particular episode about a 30 paintings in 30 days challenge.
This particular podcast was actually about those who participated sharing their stories and the benefits they received from completing the challenge. After listening I vowed to complete 30 ‘pieces’ (as opposed to paintings) in 30 days myself, starting last Friday. My major challenge was always going to be how to juggle a 9-5 job, 3 kids and pulling my weight around home while still finding the time to complete a piece every day (read: probably at most about 2 hours in the evening) for 30 days straight. Luckily for me my wife is a fantastic woman and was very supportive of the idea.
In terms of what I want to get out of such a challenge, I see it as perfect opportunity get into the habit of regular studio practice and focus on subjects and techniques I want to have a bit more of a dabble in.
I didn’t want to waste time each night um-ing and ah-ing about what to create so I started with a list of of 5 subject areas (portrait, landscape, still life, abstract, figurative), and while I want to work mainly on my acrylic painting technique, I also would like to keep up with my charcoal illustrations and experiment more with watercolour and palette knife painting. By cycling through 6 medium options (acrylic, charcoal, acrylic, watercolour, acrylic, palette knife) for each of the subject areas – I have the basis for 30 pieces, plenty of opportunities to experiment with different mediums while also exploring how I feel about working on various different subjects.
For the first cab off the rank I chose to do a figurative charcoal illustration of some gas plumbing that I came across near my work.
Now six days in – so far so good.
