The best thing about a painting challenge is that I’ve learnt to make art differently. Sometimes daunted, always rewarded, I ditched routine.

Daily painting liberated me to take more risks because I didn’t have a great investment in material or time. The small sized paintings alleviated problems.

Learning impasto painting for these daily paintings, rather than usual method of using increasingly thicker paint over previous thin layers, build confidence.

Using digital reference photography requires adjustment to give paintings more dimensionality. An infinite light and colour range is compressed to a manageable.

Making this challenge fit life was paramount. Each work takes and hour to paint. Then, there’s video edit and upload, usually took four hours.

I’m choosing monochrome for this Day 5 work from our trip deeper into the Kyeburn Diggings.  Yesterday, I cut back the the chroma to show the muted colours.

I cut back chroma on day 4 because I love colour and  decided against a monochromatic rendering of the hills.  Instead I slightly exaggerate the contrast.

Observing warm and cool contrast helps give life to a painting especially if the sun is overhead. Noon time light is cool in tone and shadows warm. 

Day 2 of my painting challenge required adjusting painting technique. Usually I start by blocking in the darkest followed by adding the lightest values.