The artist Mary Gilkerson (marygilkerson.com) has a Pinterest posting about starting a daily painting practice. She says that it's better to do a quick, 20-30 minute painting every day than to lavish hours over a painting every now and then. She says that daily painting improves skill, fluency, and judgement. It also helps a personal painting style develop--all without consciously trying for any of these benefits. This sounds so good, I have decided to do it. So today I salvaged an old canvas board and re-used it to paint an outdoor view in my back yard. I spent about 20 minutes, and the painting is absolutely awful--so bad I'm not going to post it here. But if Gilkerson is right, the next one should be a little less awful. And if I keep going, eventually they will start looking halfway decent. That would be a very welcome development. The sign that it's working will be if the paintings start showing up on my blog. We'll see.
