Yellow Bell #1, 6x6, oil on gessoed panel

How interesting life is! I don't know about you, but I'm a person who gets very intent on one idea for a long time and then I wake up one morning with a totally different direction.  I often get myself burned out on the current idea because of my intensity. Perhaps all artists are like this.

I knew when I started one-1-five I would find myself screaming in protest one of these days and salivating to paint again. I'm trying really hard to prevent that and ease back into painting and strike some sort of balance between the two.

Following in the daily painting tradition (I guess it's a tradition, or at least a trend) I'm attempting to paint a small painting almost every day. I'm not going to be rigid about it. It's not a rule. More of a survival mechanism. Just for fun. Just to experiment. Just to play around and just to learn some more about color, design, form, drawing and all the rest. . . Ooops, now I'm starting to sound too intense.

Yellow Bell #1

I'm sure you're all familiar with Carol Marine and her wonderful work. This is my attempt at doing something similar.  There will be more to follow. Different angles, cropping, modelling. And if you're interested in doing the same, she has some tutorials on her blog you might want to check out.

An interesting thing I've noticed about myself and others. There can be a certain awkwardness when one has been used to painting a particular subject and then making a switch to another. I found that to be the case when I painted this pepper. If it was a landscape I would have felt no intimidation. But I was very intimidated by this pepper! This is my second attempt at it. I got the first one done-ish and wiped it off. Started over. Wanted to wipe this one off too, but my buddies encouraged me to keep it for comparison. We'll see . . .

In the meantime I'm headed over to Carol Marine's blog to check out those tutorials. Happy painting!