Omg I needed to record the performance skills of this trusted hake brush that has painted me around the 200 paintings.And it still helped me create the painting this morning. A lesson learned though , I need to break in a few brushes at a time so I am not left , as I am at the moment with a brush on it's last legs and no replacement broken in.

Daily paintings 19/7/14 to 26/7/14. Mostly this week I have used the acrylics like watercolours, no white mixed in. I have loved it . I have got much better at achieving what I want to achieve in half an hour ( still not the case with all of them but working on it ) I have scrubbed the washes on with grotty brushes and cloths and fingers. Loved it.

I don't love every one of these but I have accepted them . I am getting quicker at excepting them as paintings too. When I started they  often took 4 or 5 days to qualify for the title of , ' painting.' I am much quicker now and that has helped me loosed  up more, even though I never would have said I needed to loosen up. Interesting.

Got the Daily paintings and Daily sketches published on pinterest. Takes no time at all now.

When I started the blog I never realised it was such a commitment , but I like it, it has just become part of my practice now, an online diary really for me to refer back to.I don't like it so much when I look at the blog of an artist  who I might be interested in and it just stops and has been abandoned.

Art plan

ART PLAN
So many artists I know live in drift land, so yo speak. No plans,a vague hope that their sales will increase, enjoying their art in the main, running or attending a few classes, putting work into open exhibitions, mixing with fellow artists who also live in drift land. Repeating the same patterns of behaviour but almost expecting different outcomes.

How to shift ?
As an artist do you know what you want ? Where you want to go ? What you want to do ?Ask yourself, what would your ideal day/week/month/year be. There is no career path for an artist, you have to make your own career.

Self awareness.
Check your self awareness - do a swot test on yourself and ask a couple of artist friends if they agree. Sometimes there is a disconnect between what we think we a good/not so good at and what other people think.

SWOT test
What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats.write these down and revisit this over a few days. I hadn't done my own for a while and had slightly lost sight of what my strengths are.

Why do you do art ?
We all do art for a set of reasons, some which overlap with artist friends, some that don't.Why do you do art ? what does it do for you ? What do you want from it ? What does it give you.

Questions you might ask yourself
Why do you do art ?
Do you want to make more money from your art ?
Do you want to teach ?
Do you want to run an Art Group ?
Do you want more recognition from your art ?
Do you want to be famous ? ( you don't need to share this, or any of it )
Do you want to exhibit more ?
Do you want to study more?
Do you want to meet up with other arty people ? why ? To make friends/ start an art group/ start a crit group.

List what you don' t want - it will help you be specific about what you do want. From my own experience, I had wanted a gallery and got the opportunity from a relative who offered me a huge space. I loved it at first but it then became a pressure in a few ways, I didn't like going every weekend, I missed out on the family stuff. I felt a constant pressure to produce new work , because it was always on show. I had to go on Bank hols when the customers came.That said, I learned a massive amount and would do it again if I could afford someone to employ.

TEACHING
Adults?children?Community art ?School projects? Residencies ? Any teaching you do, unless it is completely private ( like my groups ) will require PAPERWORK. Do you want that ? Or are you prepared to try it.
Why do you want to teach ?
What do you want to teach ? Drawing ? Painting ? Life Drawing ? plain air painting ?
Where will you teach ? Look at costs of room hire/ materials.
Who will come ?
Is there a market ?
Research your local market. what is on offer, by whom, how much, what day/ time etc. find a niche. . . . What can you , and only you offer, as opposed to the next artist

ART GROUPS
Each group has a different set of reasons for meeting. Some bring in demonstrators, some do art together, some just exhibit together. There is a healthy market in demonstrating in front of an art group. Do the artists in your area want an Art group ? Would they come if you started one ?What would they get out of it ? Tricky. I have enough self awareness to know that I am no good in a group , unless I am in charge of it ! I know that sounds bad but I am only this controlling when it comes to my art. He ho.

To sum up.
If you go through all this, you may be clearer about your direction / goals / specific targets or ambitions. The next step is to draw up your individual plan and DO IT ! - give yourself a list to do and a deadline to do it. Revisit your plan as often as you need to , to make a shift towards where you want to be. I am following my own advise as we speak and doing my plan.

I drew this up because an Artist friend who had just retired from the day job wanted advise about taking her own art to the next level. I have no idea if this will be of any use to anyone reading it but I would like some feedback if anyone can.

Daily paintings nos 104 to 111, 11/7/14 to 18/7/14 . All 52 cm sq. Acrylic. Liked these much better than the watercolours I did last week. Also have majorly looked forward toggling back into greens again.

These are the 6 daily paintings I have done so far this week. I feel that the project is plateauing, that I am not as interested in the Daily paintings. Maybe the muse gone ! Get over it ! I much prefer the daily sketches this week !

This is about right for my creative process. I love the start of a project and the adrenalin rush it gives me but then somehow the creative energy runs out and the project plateaus. I need to work through this.

Why did I start this project ?

To push along my landscape painting - tick
To create a new body of work - tick
To make the paintings in a half hour - sometimes a tick
To increase my online presence - tick
To ultimately increase my income from my painting - no tick

What to do ?
Vary sizes
Work in oils
 Do figures
Return to the paintings at the beginning of the project
Get the work critiqued by artist's friends
Work on a display for a different room or a background of a different colour - will try this one .

Daily paintings nos 96 to 103, 3 - 17/7/14. Watercolours. Well I don't like a lot of these this week, but I have published them because we don't always get them right do we ? I was trying to improve my watercolour washes and that I did. I did find it quite hard to paint intuitively with the watercolour and some of these seem a little strange. Well I reserve the right to paint over them should I choose to.

Sometimes I stretch thin cotton over board then use wallpaper paste to stick watercolour paper onto the cotton.All this weeks daily paintings are done this way and it means that I can take the cotton off the board to store them flat but also that I can put tacks in the back of the board to hang them up.

Missing daily sketch .all different sizes. This one is 30 x 30 cm sq.

Daily sketches and cards

This weeks daily sketches and cards. Loving  the paint, loving the process.

Daily paintings 82 to 89 , 26/6/14 to 3/7/14. Watercolour and a tiny bit of gesso and acrylic on paper.I have so got rusty watercolour fingers. I found it hard to gat smooth washes, hard to get dark tones and hard to work spontaneously in watercolour. All that tells me that I need to stay in watercolours to feel more confident with them. Watercolours are my roots , it has surprised me that I have got rusty. Need some new brushes then - I am bad with my brushes , I use them for all the media and then that ruins the brushes for watercolours.the paintings are published individually on my pinterest site.

For the daily paintings this week I am trying watercolours. I am also looking back to last weeks paintings to see if I can go a little deeper into the subject.The work is done on thick watercolour paper. I wet both side of the paper before I paint so it doesn't cockle. Alternatively, if I don't want the paper to move at all, I paste it to board. The first picture shows the washes and to get some texture into what could be a tree area, I put the paint on through jay cloth. Sometimes then I would take it off straightaway, other times I would leave it to dry.

I have got rusty fingers with the watercolours. I am a massive fan of xavier Swolf's work and Kurt Jackson.i just couldn't get the dark tones in the watercolour so ended up in acrylic which seem comparatively dead and flat.

Try again.