DAILY PAINTING

Daily Painting

The best thing a painter can do is paint - it seems so obvious that it sounds a bit silly.

But as with any skill, those who constantly paint can achieve things that occasional painters will find hard to match. 

It’s the completion of works that's the key….. the benefits can't be overestimated.

Importantly, finishing a painting each day means the works will probably be small and therefore manageable so we should aim to get them done within an hour or less. Any longer and we may run out of puff. The satisfaction of finishing something is immense and in no time at all we will have completed more paintings in a month than we may have painted in years.

The whole speed thing is akin to the type of painting we do outdoors - identifying the bigger shapes and tones without the need or desire to get into too much detail.  A painting where the essence of a subject is more important than the minute detail.

There are other benefits too. We get used to colour and how to mix it to get what we want.. there is no better way to learn about colour than to paint!  We gain confidence with the brush which will show in all our paintings, not just the little ones. 

We'll find using pencil to draw and then colouring it in will hamper progress. These small works are best drawn freely with the brush to encourage looseness and spontaneity – you will never look back once you get used to this.

And subject matter doesn’t need to be a problem. We can paint the same things in different ways and from different angles. If we paint "apples from life”  for a week or so we’ll become quite an expert at them.

For inspiration have a look at the work of Carol Marine – one of them most famous of the daily painters. Daily Painting may be a challenge to start with, but it quickly becomes a way of life worthy of an artist.

Happy Painting!

Mike Barr

Sand Cliffs – Middleton
Acrylic on canvas board and a very loose painting.
No.29 in my daily painting adventure – I’m now into the 70s.