Closing in

Here’s what I worked on early this morning. My studio is clean and I am working steadily on this. I plan to finish it by the end of the week.

I have to start setting time limits or I will miss some important dates. It is not enough for me to paint, showing and selling are big parts of getting better.

Seeing your work out of the studio and on a gallery wall, home or office breathes new life into the painting.

Lately, I have been on a self improvement kick. Acrylics aren’t easy and I am trying to advance my skills by doing warm up exercises. I want to get to the point where I can finish a studio painting in three sessions. I have a lot of wonderful ideas and I need to get them on canvas faster.

My plein air work needs to get down to two hours. It is usually 3/4 done on location and then another studio session of 3 to 4 hours. Sometimes by the end it has changed completely.

I used to play the flute and the bassoon in high school. I hated practicing scales and didn’t really see the benefits. I always wanted to get right into the music. Let’s skip to the good part!

That is until I started private lessons and heard my teacher doing scales. He was actually having fun with them! It was like nothing I had ever heard before. He would play backwards and forwards making a game out of it.

I remembered that and thought it was a good idea to do that in painting too. So that’s what is on my plate.

Thanks for reading along and ask me about any questions you have about my work. I am happy to help.