Photo for Friday and More

Afternoon Sunflowers, 14×20 Watercolor
©2011 Dora Sislian Themelis

The latest watercolor painting is finished. Twenty minutes of painting time has it’s merits, and it’s detractions.

On the one hand, painting for twenty minutes keeps me in line. I can’t get too busy in the details to end up trashing my work. It helps that I must step away from the painting to see it better and decide where to work next. And then there’s the drying time. All good things so far.

On the other hand I could walk away after twenty minutes of painting and quite possibly never go back. That could last a couple days and I’ll never finish the work so I could start another. I’m not the type of person to have a couple of paintings working at the same time, so that’s not helpful. I turn to jewelry or knitting if I’m not painting the latest piece. Kind of not good.

All in all the time limit thing has been positive. Ok so, I’m not cranking out painting after painting on a regular basis, or enough to paint the 100 paintings in the year. I’m working toward that goal, but anything could derail that plan.

I made a commitment, and I’d like to see it through, but the larger I paint the less work that gets done. Rather than paint little paintings, which are fine, I want to open up and work larger. Packing a lot of painting on a small surface sometimes doesn’t do justice to the work. Little by little I’m working it up in size.

Can twenty minutes translate on a larger surface? With the right brushes, subject, and mindset, maybe it’s a Yes. Could I push myself to work every day for the twenty minutes? Or, work all day on one work twenty minutes at a time? I just don’t know about that, Artist A.D.D. and all.