One Hour Oil Painting

I tried something a little different today. In fact I tried quite a lot of things a little different today.

I have been in a half-slump lately, and it doesn’t manifest every day, but often I find myself struggling to start, and one of the themes is “I don’t know what I want to paint”. Sometimes it is pure, unadulterated procrastination, and sometimes it really is feeling stumped for something to do.

This of course is entirely hilarious when there a veritable art gallery worth of unfinished projects, and that’s not even mentioning all my sketchbooks and art journals. It is what it is, though, and so instead of berating myself, I have been pondering ways to get over that.

I do not have an answer, but I have a few ideas that might work as strategies, and the only way to find out is to try them.

My favourite thing about trying new strategies is that Day 1 is always, always the perfect day, and I can go to bed imagining that all my procrastination techniques have been banished forever.

Last night I wrote down three projects I wanted to work on, and I set a time limit by each one, in the hope that today I wouldn’t have to think, I mean overthink, my plans for the day.

First up – thirty minutes timed sketching. This is a thing I have seen a lot of artists speak about as part of their practise, and I have been making more of an effort with daily sketching, so I started today, and I’ll see how it goes. I spent thirty minutes sketching some paint tubes, nothing exciting, but the point isn’t great art, the point is getting my brain into the zone.

Secondly – a one hour oil painting. Now this was interesting because I have recently been telling myself that starting oil painting in the afternoon is too late. I think I wrote something along those lines in this blog, and I have no idea where it came from. So today I threw caution to the wind, set up a timer, and got stuck into the oil painting at the top of this blog post.

It is my response to a Let’s Face It class with Misty Segura-Bowers, but I chose my own reference, and image from Dinoopis on Instagram. The prompt for the class was “paint a figure from behind” and so I stretched that just a little 😉

I gave myself ninety minutes, and only needed an hour, so I taught my inner critic quite a few home truths today.

After that, I went back to my ongoing drookit hare project, and did some painting on one of the little canvases I started last week.

A really good day of painting, where I feel very good about what I achieved.

Keep going.

Til the morn,

Suzanne

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