People publish these books hoping that a general hobbyist will pick them up, not a hardcore, I make a lot of money painter. Hardcore, I make a lot of money painters keep their secrets to themselves, and if you want those secrets you have to pay a handsome price. Workshops, videos, etc, but not just one workshop or video, you have to purchase several and even then you will not get it all.
I know that I am not an amazing painter who should be lecturing on painting techniques, but I do know some things. Things that I have spent hours searching out and if I could have just found one website to read about it all, that would have been awesome. I think that I really will do this: Art Tips and Techniques. Yep.
Maybe one day I will write my ideal art textbook (shaking head no). But back to the book Daily Painting. One thing that the book does talk about quite a bit, as you can guess from the title, is daily painting. Not daily painting in the sense of making sure that you are painting everyday, albeit important, but finishing a painting a day.
The idea is too keep the paintings small, the subject manageable, and the paintings to be finished in a one to two hours time period. Keeping them small means that you should be able to finish the works in a day, and the idea is that they will help you take more risks. It is much easier to give up on an idea when you have only spent a small amount of time on it, on a very small work, verses when you have dedicated a huger painting to trying out an idea and it fails.
The daily painting idea, as she uses it, would have been perfect for me if I was still painting in a looser fashion. Such as here:
But even in this painting I was starting to move away from a more quickly painted style. At first I thought this daily painting thing would be a super good idea. I jumped right in, and Day 1 went great. Day 2 not so great, Day 3 I picked too complex of a subject, and by Day 4 I thought, "I don't think this is what I want to do this these daily paintings." Right now, I want to be able to go super detailed when I want to and then to back away and be loose when I feel it is needed.
So I am going to take the author's idea of a daily painting, and change it a little bit for my own purposes: going small (6x6 is the largest), making sure I am experimenting in each, and painting them for two hours a day and then putting them away. This means some will take longer than others, but I think that I am okay with this. I think that I like where I will be going with them.
Hopefully good things will come of it.
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