30 Paintings in 30 Days – Day 30! – Towards Light

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Holy moly, it’s been 30 days already!? I was worried about not having enough time but it went really well this season after all. It helped to make them on paper instead of on cotton canvas and it also helped with speed to make two side by side. Sometimes I was able to make two in one day, giving me a day’s break. I still made a few paintings that I’m not happy with and I wonder if I should make sure I’m several days ahead at all times, so I’d avoid painting on days when I really don’t feel like it. Not feeling it really messes with the results for me.

Tomorrow the next challenge starts – Inktober. Then I’ll be working in inks, I have several different colours to work with and I’m thinking of following the witch themed one but incorporating the official Inktober prompt list into it. We’ll see. For now, here we are, the light at the end of the tunnel, the end of the acrylic painting challenge. I’ll still randomly make acrylic paintings from time to time but ah, I should probably tend to that ignored pile of dishes and such as well, now that there’s no acrylic challenge to keep me terribly busy. Man oh man, this has been so much fun!

“Towards Light”, acrylics on paper, A4-sized.

Below is how the last two paintings look side by side.

30 Paintings in 30 Days – Day 28 – Close

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The twin painting to yesterday’s creation turned out to be another one I really like. And as usual it’s a representation of how I feel right now. I did start on it yesterday but I only did the foreground with the grasses and ground and some implied trees in the background – the finished painting is how I feel right now. But how do I explain that? The straightness of the trees, the joined canopy, the independent little mini hills that they stand on, the joint darker ground. The mist. Warmth and cold at the same time. A hare that’s alert. A more crooked tree on the other side. Well.. It all makes a sort of emotional sense.

“Close”, acrylics on paper, A4-sized.

30 Paintings in 30 Days – Day 27 – Evening Glow

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Ah, bright poppy-like flowers, happy trees, I’m in a good loving mood this evening. Some parts of the day were really good and I guess I’m basking in the warm after-effect of that and the stupid little hopeful feeling that maybe life could go places.

“Evening Glow”, acrylics on paper, A4-sized.

I started this one by making a less calm background than I had before. Dotted out red and yellow then went across smoothing it out with a bit of white mixed in. I rarely plan, I just see where things go.

30 Paintings in 30 Days – Day 26 – That Way

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I designed this to be a landscape with a sad looking tree but it wasn’t working out, so I started experimenting, doing weird things.. and my mood shifted a lot too. I knew today wasn’t a good painting day because I just couldn’t find peace inside. I just kept freaking out about what if’s. So my preferred colours kept changing. Ugh. On the positive side; when I look at it I get inspired to paint some children’s book paintings, I like that.

“That Way”, acrylics on paper, A4-sized.

30 Paintings in 30 Days – Day 25 – Taking Flight

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This painting somehow looks better in real life than on this photo. Weird. It’s why I decided to leave it like this, simple. Usually I’d be working on shades and grasses and flowers and.. today I’m just going nah. Just nah. This is what I want. This is how I feel. There’s the trees further apart that just can’t get to eachother but then they take flight as birds instead and reach eachother that way. Circumstances can be limiting but there’s ways forward, you know?

“Taking Flight”, acrylics on paper, A4-sized.

Maybe the birds are a bit thick. They’ve eaten too many worms and bread crumbs. I’ll see about fixing that.

30 Paintings in 30 Days – Day 24 – Party in the Woods

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Next to its twin, the painting posted yesterday, this one looks so loose and fuzzy, I don’t know if I like it yet. It’s hard not to compare and have a preference. Maybe I’ll keep working on this later, maybe not, we’ll see. Right now I’m tempted to add a bunch of colours and decorations. At first I thought of it more like woodland spirits celebrating, now it feels much more like they’re human, and humans bring stuff with them. It’s a party in the woods either way. Autumn colours, equinox on my mind still.

“Party in the Woods”, acrylic on paper, A4-sized.

30 Paintings in 30 Days – Day 23 – Autumn

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Happy equinox and Mabon and all that jazz! Today I’ve been cutting down on summer things on my balcony, taking down the watering system and one of the flower boxes, bringing some of the plants indoors, so autumn has been much on my mind. Right now the night sky is periodically getting lit with bright flashes, I thought it’s so cold that thunder was a thing of the past already. Apparently not. I’d better hurry up and post this in case it comes closer.

“Autumn”, acrylic on paper, A4-sized.

30 Paintings in 30 Days – Day 21 – City Life

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After all the careful brush strokes I needed something different today so I grabbed the palette knife and started carving out points of light and spreading out colourful foliage. The palette knife is also a great way to get cool textures and coverage over the whole surface fast and I needed that speed. After work I collapsed and half slept for about 2 hours, losing a bunch of painting time to fatigue. But such is life with fibromyalgia, I’ve had a persistent cough virus for a while and the combo fibro + virus is making me far more tired than usual. But I know how to work fast. And it was such fun! I really enjoy the messy lines, all the smudgy colours combining into something that looks alive.

“City Life”, acrylics on paper, about A4-sized.

This painting doubled as my entry for this week’s #colour_collective submission on Twitter. The colour theme this week was a cool green colour.