30x30 Direct Watercolour 2018 - Challenge complete

Yes, dearly beloved, yesterday I painted number 30 to complete the 30x30direct watercolor challenge. Here they all are, in no particular order : -

In fact, I enjoyed the challenge so much that I have kept painting watercolours in June - today I added this - number 31

Self Assessment - Progress Report

You can tell I'm a teacher from the title of this post, can't you. OK, let's get a few things straight. I make my pictures - paintings, sketches, whatever - because I love doing it. I get satisfaction from it, and I don't pretend to be a great, or particularly good artist - I'm not. If people are good enough to give me money for any of my pictures, well, I'm not going to turn it down. But if I never sold another picture - a distinct possibility - then I wouldn't stop doing it. So to that extent, it wouldn't necessarily matter if I never became any better at it.

However, while painting is not a competition to me, I'm honest enough to admit that I'd still like to get better at it. If we compare it with sketching, particularly sketching with an ink pen, although you can always improve, and it would be lovely to get better, I'm not unhappy with my sketching. Most of the time I get results that I'm pretty happy with. But then I was always drawing as a kid, and I never really stopped as I got older When it comes to painting though, effectively you can say that I've only been doing it since the summer of 2015 - three years. So I have to admit that question does occur to me - am I actually getting any better.

To this end I've been looking at a scan of my very first acrylic painting (I sold the original) and comparing it with my latest canvas. It helps that they both have similar subject matter. Here's my first:-

Now here's my latest:-

Now, I don't want to criticise my first painting for the sake of criticising it. This was where I had to paint like this to help learn to paint the way I can paint now. I think that if you look at the front end of both engines you can see the development. I don't think I could have painted figures like those in the second picture back at that time either. Verdict? Still room for improvement, but making some progress.

Latest Project

This is where we were at 6:30 this evening: -

and this is where we were two hours later: -

Very pleased with this evening's work

Latest Project

I spent another couple of hours on Wednesday evening at the Artists' Group working on my latest acrylic canvas. Here's where it was up to Wednesday evening: -

- and this is how far I got on Wednesday:-

It's unusual for me in that I've got this far without having decided that I've ruined it! The tank engine still needs a lot of work, and I'm not at all sure that I'll finish it on Wednesday, but that's fine.

30 x 30 Direct Watercolor 2018

I've been taking part in the 30x30 Direct Watercolor 2018 Challenge on Facebook. This is the brainchild of two of my favourite urban sketching bloggers - Liz Steel and Marc Taro Holmes. Aimed at encouraging participants to spend more time using watercolor, the challenge is for us to produce 30 direct watercolors during June. A direct watercolour is one where you sketch with the brush and the paint without using pencil or ink guidelines. There is no stipulation that it has to be just one painting per day, which is good since I've already made 7. However I will be running it alongside my own personal one sketch a day for a year challenge - which you can follow on my South Wales Urban Sketcher blog - link on the right. Here's the first pictures

June 1st - my spag bol triptych - 1) Ingredients - 2) Ready to Eat on the plate - 3) Leftovers ready for freezing still in the pan

June 2nd - 4) Stag in Margam Park - 5) Caerphilly Castle painted en plein air

June 3rd - 6) Sir Anthony Hopkins - and 7) Emma Thompson - from The Remains of the Day