Mini Alien Paintings
During 2020, I discovered the Learn to Paint podcast hosted by Kelly Ann Powers. It is an excellent podcast and I highly recommend it. In one episode, she talks with an artist who has painted every single day for years. This artist is so committed to painting every single day that she takes paint with her on vacation and sets aside time in hotel rooms to complete a painting. The piece of information that made me believe that I too might be able to do this was that every day she paints a small painting —like 4x4 inches!
About that same time, I had the opportunity to acquire a lot of free mat board. A frame shop was going out of business and I went to their liquidation sale and they gave me all the sample mat boards that had been cut up into L shapes pieces. I borrowed my brother’s guillotine paper cutter that he was getting rid of, and cut all the L shapes into 4x6 or 4x4 inch pieces of mat board.
At the beginning of 2021, I started a daily painting habit that netted me exactly 17 mini paintings. Not quite 1 painting a day. Not by a long shot. I was focusing on using a Zorn palette and my goal was to increase my skill at painting an African face so I could complete my Teenage Medusa painting. Most paintings I spent 45 minutes to 1.5 hours on them. Since I had a bigger goal of having an amazing art exhibit for the Fall of 2021, I decided to let the daily habit slip.
17 mini daily paintings I did in 2021.
I have big goals for 2022, so why do I think I could make this happen this year when I failed last year? Well, I usually fail my first try at most everything. But it also dovetails nicely with my My One thing this year: Increase my Audience. New fresh content is the fastest way to build an audience. The 9x12 paintings I did last year took me about 12 hours to complete. I know I can’t pop one of those out every day. I usually only have 5 hours in a day to “work” on my artwork. Today’s mini painting took me about 1.5 hours. Much longer than I want to devote to this practice, but I’m hopeful that with enough practice, I will get faster or find a process that will net me what I’m looking for in a smaller amount of time.
My goal is to start my work day with a mini painting. I am calling it a success so long as I paint for at least 30 minutes. As some of my 2021 paintings did not get finished, I expect that there will be somedays that I won’t finish a painting. I’m going to call it a success, however, when I have 151 mini paintings—which is about how many “work” days I will have this year.
Today’s painting I opted for an alien. As I said, I spent more time on it that I wanted to. And it is a lot more fiddley than I envisioned it being. I have faith, however, that after a month of paintings, 3 months of paintings, a year of paintings, that I’ll not only be faster, but I will have learned how to paint with more control.
I have 1 painting done, only 13 more to go this month, 47 more to go this quarter, and 150 left to paint this year. If you want to own it, click on the picture below and you can have the original for your very own or gift it to a person whom you love.
What kinds of paintings do you want to see me paint in 2022?
