Starting Sept. 1, I did the Strada challenge. This structured competition of sorts just asked that each day you choose FB or Insta and post a painting or drawing from life each day. I had some fairly low-quality watercolor paper to use and drawing/painting from life is a truly helpful exercise for any artist. I delved in and started. Below is a collection of all of them and there is a variety of shapes, sizes, themes. Then, if participants can stick with it, they are entered into a drawing for a free easel and/or similar items from Strada. The first set was pretty simple warm-up style. It took me about 8 days to finally start getting into the groove as it were.
From the selection above, I would say that the Hershey's kiss might be my favorite, metallic surfaces are kind of new and fun in small doses. I absolutely hate the cake. It was such a beautiful cake and somehow I couldn't draw circular forms. Otherwise, I really enjoyed starting on the polyhedral dice set, adding the sketchbooks and their ribbons as part of the composition.
Towards the end, you'll see some of the not-so-realistic stuff. I went past the challenge and into Inktober. I did not win anything from the Strada challenge, but learned a lot of great little lessons and tricks for painting more regularly. Interestingly enough, I found that my process from making comics can work the same with watercolors. Pencil sketch, ink lines, paint, and final inking. Turns out there are some things about the way my brain works and my muscle memory that lean into this in order to compartmentalize and structure imagery. Sometimes doing plein air I can get overwhelmed and struggle to keep objects/colors where they should be. The waterproof ink is a must for my process!
All in all, the real lesson here was practice, practice, practice. With winter coming soon, this will be important because so much of the drive to paint is the desire to be outside in the beautiful scenery and weather. As it gets colder, this gets tougher and in Wisconsin this will be a whole new level of cold!
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